1696 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – William II
• Secretary of State – James Johnston, until January or February; then John Murray, Earl of Tullibardine jointly with James Ogilvy, 4th Earl of Findlater

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Sir James Stewart
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Sir Patrick Hume

Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – vacant??
• Lord Justice General – Lord Lothian
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Ormiston

Events

• February – the Bank of Scotland opens for business
• 8 September – Education Act passed by parliament to establish schools in every parish in the country.
• Perth Academy founded.
• Famine in the Borders leads to a new wave of Scottish Presbyterian migration from Scotland to Ulster.

Births

• 11 June – James Francis Edward Keith, soldier and Prussian field marshal
• 15 September – Sir Archibald Grant, 2nd Baronet, company speculator and Member of parliament for Aberdeenshire, 1722–1732 date unknown –
• * William Duff, 1st Earl Fife, peer
• * Henry Home, Lord Kames, advocate, judge, philosopher, writer and agricultural improver
• * John Lyon, 5th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, peer, died at the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715
• * Anne O'Brien, 2nd Countess of Orkney, noblewoman,

Deaths

• 2 August – Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, a commanding officer at the Massacre of Glencoe date unknown – Arthur Forbes, 1st Earl of Granard, soldier