• Secretary of State for Scotland: vacant

Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – Charles Erskine
• Solicitor General for Scotland – William Grant of Prestongrange

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Culloden
• Lord Justice General – Lord Ilay
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Milton

• 17 May – George Watson's College opens in Edinburgh as George Watson's Hospital.
• Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh moves to a new building designed by William Adam.
• Robert Foulis sets up a publishing business in Glasgow.
• Leadhills Miners' Library set up.
• Earliest known record of the Royal Order of Scotland within British Freemasonry.
• 47th (Lancashire) Regiment of Foot raised in Scotland as General John Mordaunt's Regiment of Foot.

• 2 March – James Stuart, British Army officer, commander-in-chief of the Madras Army (died 1815 in England)
• 23 August – James Hope-Johnstone, 3rd Earl of Hopetoun (died 1816)
• 25 August – Henry Hunter, Presbyterian minister and translator (died 1802 in England)
• James Moncrief, military engineer (died of wounds 1793 in Flanders)
• William Russell, writer (died 1793)

• 18 March – Thomas Gordon, commodore in the Royal Scots Navy and admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy (born c. 1658; died in Russia)
• November – John Ker, academic and Latin poet

• Timeline of Scottish history