1788 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Ilay Campbell
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Dundas of Arniston

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Glenlee
• Lord Justice General – The Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Braxfield

  Events

• 31 January – Henry Benedict Stuart becomes the new Stuart claimant to the throne of Great Britain as King Henry IX and the figurehead of Jacobitism.
• 14 March – the Edinburgh Evening Courant carries a notice of £200 reward for capture of William Brodie, town councillor doubling as a burglar.
• 27 August – trial of William Brodie begins in Edinburgh. He is sentenced to death by hanging.
• 1 October – William Brodie hanged at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh.
• 14 October – William Symington demonstrates a paddle steamer on Dalswinton Loch near Dumfries.
• Tobermory, Mull, and Ullapool are founded as herring ports by the British Fisheries Society to the designs of Thomas Telford.
• Flax mills established at Brigton in Angus and Inverbervie in Kincardineshire.
• Lowland Licence Act restricts exports of Scottish gin to England, effectively requiring a one-year pause in the trade.
• St Gregory's Church, Preshome, designed by Father John Reid, is built.
• Ring of bells cast for the new steeple of St Andrew's Church in New Town, Edinburgh, the oldest complete ring in Scotland.
• General Register House in Edinburgh, designed by Robert Adam and begun in 1774, is opened to the public.
• The estate house at Yair is built.
• Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition begins publication in Edinburgh.

  Births

• 31 January – John Ewart, architect and businessman in North America
• April – George Ferguson, naval officer
• 15 May – Neil Arnott, physician
• 29 August – Ranald George Macdonald, clan chief and politician
• 2 September – John Strange, merchant and politician in Canada
• 13 October – Thomas Erskine, lawyer and revisionary Calvinist theologian
• 11 November – Thomas Francis Kennedy, lawyer and politician
• 31 December – Basil Hall, naval officer and explorer
• David Lennox, builder of stone bridges in Australia
• Charles Mackenzie, diplomat and journalist
• George Mudie, social reformer
• James Thompson, Baptist pastor and educator in South America

  Deaths

• 31 January – Charles Edward Stuart, claimant to the British throne
• 14 June – Adam Gib, Secession Church leader
• 15 October – Samuel Greig, admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy

  The arts

• December – Robert Burns writes his version of the Scots poem Auld Lang Syne. From Whitsun he has been tenant of Ellisland Farm.
• William Collins publishes Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland.