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1764 in Scotland

overview of Scotland-related events during the year of 1764

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ21997352 ↗
Source-derived summary

Events from the year 1764 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Law officers

Lord Advocate – Thomas Miller of Glenlee

Solicitor General for Scotland – James Montgomery jointly with Francis Garden; then James Montgomery alone

Judiciary

Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger

Lord Justice General – Duke of Queensberry

Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Minto

Events

3 January – Edinburgh Advertiser newspaper begins publication.

November – The Speculative Society established in Edinburgh as a debating group, part of the Scottish Enlightenment.

New Byth established as a planned village in Aberdeenshire by the local laird.

New liturgy for the Scottish Episcopal Church published in Edinburgh.

The turnip is first cultivated in Scotland as a field crop, by Dawson of Frogden (Roxburghshire).

Howden Bridge built at Mid Calder.

Approximate date – Yair Bridge built across the River Tweed by William Mylne.

Births

c. 1 February – George Duff, naval officer (killed 1805 at Battle of Trafalgar)

22 February – Alexander Campbell, musician and miscellaneous writer (died 1824)

5 May – Robert Craufurd, general (killed 1812 at Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo)

11 July – Jane Aitken, printer (died 1832 in the United States)

5 October – Isaac Cruikshank, painter and caricaturist (died 1811 in London)

10 October – John Dick, minister and theologian (died 1833)

October – William Symington, mechanical engineer, steamboat pioneer (died 1831 in London)

6 November – Robert Heron, writer (died 1807 in London)

Alexander Mackenzie, explorer of northern Canada (died 1820)

Deaths

23 May – William Grant, Lord Prestongrange, politician and judge (born 1701; died at Bath)

The arts

Pompeo Batoni paints portraits of Thomas Dundas and Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon in Rome.

Editorial summary

“1764 in Scotland” enters the record as overview of Scotland-related events during the year of 1764. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Scotland, overview and Scotland-related can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1764, 1805, 1824, 1812—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Scotland, overview and Scotland-related.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“1764 in Scotland” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Scotland, overview and Scotland-related provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21997352. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1764, 1805, 1824 and 1812.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1764 in Scotland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.