Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – James Montgomery
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Henry Dundas

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger
• Lord Justice General – Duke of Queensberry
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming

• 1 January – The Banking Company in Aberdeen, a co-partnery, opens for business.^[1]
• July – Edinburgh Council adopts the final plan for the New Town, for which the architect James Craig has been made a Freeman of the city on 3 June.
• Quarries and lime kilns at Charlestown, Fife, opened by Charles Bruce, 5th Earl of Elgin.^[2]
• Marischal Bridge, the first of Aberdeen's viaducts, is completed.
• Auchincruive House is built after a design by Robert Adam.
• The circular Kilarrow Parish Church in Bowmore on Islay is built.
• The Johnston family enters the printing business.
• Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society is published.

• 13 January – James Malcolm, Royal Marines officer (died 1849)
• 1 March – Alexander Balfour, novelist, short-story writer and poet (died 1829)
• 7 April – Henry Bell, marine engineer (died 1830)
• 6 July – George Johnstone Hope, admiral (died 1818 in London)
• 3 October – Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton, politician and art collector (born, and died 1852, in London)
• Anthony Anderson, merchant and politician in Lower Canada (died 1847 in Canada)
• George Watson, portrait painter (died 1837)
• Approximate date – Miles Macdonell, settler in North America (died 1828)

• 1 April – Laurence Oliphant, Jacobite soldier (born 1691)
• 10 July – Alexander Monro, physician (born 1697 in London)
• 15 July – Michael Bruce, poet and hymnist (born 1746)
• 10 December – John Leslie, 10th Earl of Rothes, soldier (born 1698)
• William Delacour, portrait painter (born 1700 in France)

• Timeline of Scottish history