1726 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Secretary of State for Scotland: ''vacant''

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Duncan Forbes
• Solicitor General for Scotland – John Sinclair, jointly with Charles Erskine

Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord North Berwick
• Lord Justice General – Lord Ilay
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Grange

Events

• c. April/May – General George Wade begins an 11-year construction program on military roads of Scotland.
• 25 May – Britain's first circulating library is opened in Edinburgh by poet and bookseller Allan Ramsay.
• 23 June – professional Irish swordsman Andrew Bryan is defeated in a public duel in Edinburgh by 62-year-old Killiecrankie veteran Donald Bane "to the great joy of the Edinburgh citizenry".
• A faculty of medicine is formally established at the University of Edinburgh, a predecessor of the University of Edinburgh Medical School. John Rutherford becomes Professor of Practice of Medicine.

Births

• 17 January – Hugh Mercer, soldier and physician
• 6 February – Patrick Russell, surgeon and herpetologist
• 3 June – James Hutton, geologist
• 26 September – John H. D. Anderson, scientist
• Andrew Bell, engraver, co-founder of the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Thomas Melvill, natural philosopher

Deaths

• 8 July – John Ker, spy
• August – Colonel John Stewart (of Livingstone), former Member of Parliament for the Kirkcudbright Stewartry, killed by Sir Gilbert Eliott, 3rd Baronet, of Stobs
• 25 November – Robert Dundas, Lord Arniston, judge

The arts

• James Thomson begins publication of his poem cycle The Seasons with "Winter".