1766 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Thomas Miller of Glenlee; then James Montgomery
• Solicitor General for Scotland – James Montgomery; then Henry Dundas

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 1 January – Charles Edward Stuart becomes the new Stuart claimant to the throne of Great Britain as King Charles III and figurehead for Jacobitism, on the death of his father James Francis Edward Stuart in Rome.
• 17 April – James Craig's plan for the New Town, Edinburgh, wins the prize offered by the city council in January.
• 13 June – two soldiers and a civilian found guilty in Aberdeen of theft during an earlier meal riot in Banff are rescued from custody by a mob.
• 28 October – Coldstream Bridge across the River Tweed on the Northumberland border, designed by John Smeaton, is opened to traffic.

  Births

• 18 January – Robert Forsyth, topographical writer
• March – Helen Hyslop, domestic servant, a possible mistress and muse of Robert Burns
• 10 April – John Leslie, mathematician and physicist, researcher into radiant heat
• 6 July – Alexander Wilson, ornithologist
• 21 July – Thomas Charles Hope, physician and chemist, discoverer of strontium
• 16 August – Carolina Nairne, songwriter
• 29 December – Charles Macintosh, chemist, inventor of a waterproof fabric
• Charles Baird, mechanical engineer
• May Cameron, domestic servant, a mistress of Robert Burns
• Jenny Clow, domestic servant, a mistress and muse of Robert Burns

  Deaths

• 3 September – Archibald Bower, Jesuit historian
• 1 December – David Scott, politician
• 13 December – Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton, judge and entrepreneur
• 24 December – James Grainger, surgeon, poet and translator
• Robert Maxwell, writer on agriculture
• Approximate date – John Alexander, painter