1723 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George I
• Secretary of State for Scotland: The Duke of Roxburghe

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Robert Dundas
• Solicitor General for Scotland – John Sinclair, jointly with Charles Binning

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord North Berwick
• Lord Justice General – Lord Ilay
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Grange

  Events

• 8 June – The Honourable Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland is formed in Edinburgh by over 300 landowners, part of the Scottish Enlightenment.
• 11 November – 18 people drown in the River Tweed near Melrose when a ferry boat capsizes.

  Births

• 3 February – Catherine Read, portrait painter
• c. 5 February – John Witherspoon, Presbyterian minister, a Founding Father of the U.S. and President of the College of New Jersey
• 23 February – William Chambers, architect
• 5 June – Adam Smith, economist and philosopher
• 20 June – Adam Ferguson, philosopher and social historian
• 29 August – William Dalrymple, Church of Scotland minister
• Lady Anne Farquharson-MacKintosh, Jacobite
• Gavin Hamilton, neoclassical history painter, archaeologist and dealer
• Francis Peacock, "father of Scottish country dance"

  Deaths

• 3 April – George Watson, accountant and benefactor

  The arts

• Mavisbank House in Midlothian is designed by William Adam in collaboration with his client, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, and construction begins; it is the first Palladian villa in Scotland.
• Cairney-born painter William Aikman settles in London as a portraitist under the patronage of John Campbell, Duke of Argyll.