1808 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Archibald Colquhoun
• Solicitor General for Scotland – David Boyle

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Succoth to 31 August; then Lord Avontoun
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Granton

  Events

• January – Christopher Anderson begins missionary work in The Pleasance district of Edinburgh, which will lead to his taking over the Charlotte Chapel.
• 2 March – inaugural meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society is held in Edinburgh under the presidency of Prof. Robert Jameson.
• 21 May – Thomas Telford's Tongland bridge is fully completed.
• 27 May – the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway becomes the first railway line in Scotland to be authorised by Act of Parliament.
• 7 June – first meeting at the Bogside Racecourse, Irvine.
• October – Thomas Telford's Dunkeld-Birnam bridge is opened to road traffic.
• John Rennie's new Musselburgh Bridge is completed.
• Court of Session Act reforms the Court of Session.
• Broadford flax mill is established in Aberdeen, the earliest iron-framed textile mill in Scotland.
• William Blackwood begins publication of the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, edited by David Brewster.
• Travel writer Sir John Carr publishes Caledonian Sketches, or a Tour through Scotland in 1807.

  Births

• 22 January – James Fergusson, architectural historian
• 29 February – Hugh Falconer, geologist, botanist, paleontologist and paleoanthropologist
• 9 May – John Scott Russell, shipbuilder
• 11 June – James Ballantine, painter
• 16 June – James Frederick Ferrier, metaphysical and epistemological philosopher
• 19 August – James Nasmyth, mechanical engineer
• 24 August – William Lindsay Alexander, church leader
• c. 7 or 8 September – William Livingston, Gaelic poet
• 15 September – John Hutton Balfour, botanist
• 21 September – Evan MacColl, poet writing in Gaelic and English
• 19 December – Horatius Bonar, Free Church minister and hymnodist
• James Gall, evangelical minister, astronomer and cartographer
• David Moore, born Muir, botanist
• David Rhind, architect
• James Aitken Wylie, Free Church minister and religious historian

  Deaths

• 20 January – Francis Charteris, Lord Elcho
• 28 January – James Finlayson, minister of the Church of Scotland
• 13 February – William Fullarton, British Army officer, agriculturalist and colonial governor
• 19 June – Alexander Dalrymple, hydrographer
• 2 July – Robert Arnot, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
• 21 August – John Adamson, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
• 23 August – Robert Small, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, mathematician and astronomer
• 5 September – John Home, Episcopalian minister, playwright and writer
• 20 September – John Elliot, Royal Navy officer
• 15 October – James Anderson of Hermiston, agriculturalist
• 24 October – Francis Wemyss-Charteris, landowner

  The arts

• Walter Scott's poem Marmion: a tale of Flodden Field is published in Edinburgh.