1697 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – William II
• Secretary of State – John Murray, Earl of Tullibardine, jointly with James Ogilvy, 4th Earl of Findlater

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Sir James Stewart
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Sir Patrick Hume

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – vacant??
• Lord Justice General – Lord Lothian
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Ormiston

  Events

• 8 January – student Thomas Aikenhead becomes the last person in Great Britain to be executed for blasphemy when he is hanged outside Edinburgh.
• 10 June – the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe when five Paisley witches are hanged and then burned.
• Famine in the Borders leads to continued Scottish Presbyterian migration from Scotland to Ulster.
• Icelandic-Norwegian historian and professor Th. Torfæus, publishes his work on the Orkney Islands, Orknøerne.

  Births

• 23 January – James Fisher, a founder of the Secession church
• 5 February – William Smellie, obstetrician
• 19 September – Alexander Monro, physician and founder of Edinburgh Medical School
• 23 September – Andrew Plummer, physician and chemist
• 2 November – James Douglas, 3rd Marquess of Queensberry, nobleman, described as 'violently insane'; slaughters, roasts and eats a scullion when just ten years old
• date unknown – Charles Hamilton, Lord Binning, nobleman, politician and poet

  Deaths

• 8 January – Thomas Aikenhead, student and last person in Great Britain executed for blasphemy
• 11 August – John Hay, 1st Marquess of Tweeddale, Lord Chancellor of Scotland,
• date unknown –
• * Alexander Gordon pioneer

  The arts

• A Collection of several Poems and Verses composed upon various occasions by William Cleland is published posthumously.