1805 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Sir James Montgomery, Bt
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Blair

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Succoth
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Granton

  Events

• 5 June – Edinburgh engraver David Scott and potter Hugh Adamson are executed at Glasgow Cross for forging banknotes.
• 21 October – Battle of Trafalgar: A British Royal Navy fleet led by Admiral Horatio Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain. Around 1,150 of the 18,000 men on the British ships were born in Scotland.
• The planned village of New Scone is established.
• John and James Crombie establish the Crombie clothing company in Aberdeen.
• Isla Bank Mills at Keith are established.
• Killermont House is built at Bearsden for the Campbell-Colquhoun family.
• Rebuilding of Stobo Castle is begun.
• The Snow Tower of Kildrummy Castle collapses.
• English geologist George Bellas Greenough tours Scotland.

  Births

• 26 January – Patrick Fairbairn, theologian
• 30 January – Edward Sang, mathematician
• 8 March – Rayner Stephens, radical reformer and Methodist minister
• 26 March – Alexander John Scott, dissident theologian and educationalist
• 18 May – James Paterson journalist and antiquary
• 26 May – Joseph Grant, poet
• 3 August – William McCombie, agriculturalist
• 8 August – Henry Craik, evangelical preacher and Hebraist
• 11 October – James Salmon, architect
• 28 October – John Thomson, classical composer
• November – Horatio McCulloch, landscape painter
• 10 December – William Anderson, writer
• 13 December – Johann von Lamont, astronomer and physicist
• 21 December – Thomas Graham, chemist
• Alexander Forrester, educationalist in Nova Scotia
• James Merry, ironmaster, Liberal politician and racehorse breeder
• David Boswell Reid, physician, chemist and "grandfather of air conditioning"

  Deaths

• 30 January – John Robison, physicist
• 25 February – William Buchan, physician
• 29 March – Jean Elliot, poet
• 28 August – Alexander Carlyle, Church of Scotland leader
• 21 October – George Duff, naval officer
• 23 December – Francis Masson, plant hunter

  The arts

• Walter Scott's narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel is published.