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← 1777 1776 1775 1774 1773 1778 in Scotland → 1779 1780 1781 1782 1783
Centuries:	16th 17th 18th 19th 20th
Decades:	1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s
See also:	List of years in Scotland Timeline of Scottish history 1778 in: Great Britain • Wales • Ireland • Elsewhere

Events from the year 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 USS Ranger (1777) captures HMS Drake (1777) in the North Channel off Carrickfergus.


• 15 May – 78th Regiment of Foot raised by Kenneth Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, at Elgin.^[1] 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.^[2]
  


• First cotton mill in Scotland established at Penicuik.^[3]
  


• Inhabited House Tax first imposed.

Births

• 9 January – Thomas Brown, metaphysician (died 1820 in London)


• 16 January – John Arbuthnott, 8th Viscount of Arbuthnott, peer and soldier (died 1860 in Bruges?)


• 24 March – Robert Fleming Gourlay, agriculturist in Canada and writer (died 1863)


• 18 April – Mary Bruce, Countess of Elgin, née Nisbet (died 1855)


• 18 May – Andrew Ure, doctor, industrial chemist and encylopaedist (died 1857 in London)


• 11 August – John Christian Schetky, marine painter (died 1874 in London)


• 1 November – Mary Brunton, novelist (died 1818)


• 
  Robert Davidson, peasant poet (died 1855)


• Approximate date – Anna Maria Walker, née Patton, botanist (died 1852 in India)

Deaths

• 31 October – Thomas Cochrane, 8th Earl of Dundonald, nobleman, army officer and politician (born 1691)


• 15 December – Catherine Read, portrait painter (born 1723)


• 
  Rob Donn, Gaelic poet (born 1714)


• 
  Charles Douglas, 3rd Duke of Queensberry (born 1698)


• 
  George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal, Jacobite and Prussian soldier and diplomat (born 1692/3?; died at Potsdam)

See also

• Timeline of Scottish history

References