1778 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Henry Dundas;
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Murray

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Queensberry until 22 October; then from 23 October The Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming

  Events

• 24 April – American Revolutionary War: North Channel Naval Duel: Scottish-born John Paul Jones in the captures in the North Channel off Carrickfergus.
• 15 May – 78th Regiment of Foot raised by Kenneth Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, at Elgin. In Summer, there is a brief "Mutiny of MacRaes" at Edinburgh.
• 28 May – Recruiting Act 1778, applying only to London and Scotland, provides for 3-year service in the British Army with a bounty of £3, and for the impressment as soldiers of "all able-bodied idle, and disorderly persons, who could not... prove themselves to... follow some lawful trade or employment".
• The Court of Session decides an appeal by slave Joseph Knight which effectively declares that slavery is illegal in Scotland.
• First cotton mill in Scotland established at Penicuik.
• Inhabited House Tax first imposed.
• Highland Society of London established with "the view of establishing and supporting schools in the Highlands and in the Northern parts of Great Britain, for relieving distressed Highlanders at a distance from their native homes, for preserving the antiquities and rescuing from oblivion the valuable remains of Celtic literature, and for promoting the improvement and general welfare of the Northern parts of Great Britain".

  Births

• 9 January – Thomas Brown, metaphysician
• 16 January – John Arbuthnott, 8th Viscount of Arbuthnott, peer and soldier
• 24 March – Robert Fleming Gourlay, agriculturist in Canada and writer
• 18 April – Mary Bruce, Countess of Elgin, née Nisbet
• 18 May – Andrew Ure, doctor, industrial chemist and encyclopaedist
• 11 August – John Christian Schetky, marine painter
• 1 November – Mary Brunton, novelist
• Robert Davidson, peasant poet
• Approximate date – Anna Maria Walker, née Patton, botanist

  Deaths

• 31 October – Thomas Cochrane, 8th Earl of Dundonald, nobleman, army officer and politician
• 15 December – Catherine Read, portrait painter
• Rob Donn, Gaelic poet
• Charles Douglas, 3rd Duke of Queensberry
• George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal, Jacobite and Prussian soldier and diplomat