The Lords of Session regularly heard disputes over real and personal property.  Scottish law divided property between heritable (real) and moveable (personal) "subjects." The law prevented the transfer of heritable property by means of a will. Real estate descended to the deceased's immediate heirs, but through a will a testor could convey moveable property to her or his executors, next of kin, or anyone else they saw fit.

Robert Gibb's 1826 painting, Craigmillar Castle from Dalkeith Road, is an idealized vision of an early nineteenth-century Scottish agricultural landscape. His work captured the centrality of farming and animal husbandry to Scotland's economy and society, even if his scene of pastoral serenity belied the era's chaotic land reforms and social dislocation.

Labor in its many forms was a fundamental part of everyday life in Scotland and the British Atlantic world. Skilled professionals and unskilled laborers performed a variety of jobs, from law clerks in the Court of Session, to Highland kelp farmers, to Lowland nursemaids. Indentured servants bound themselves out to individual masters or companies in exchange for an education in a particular trade or the chance to make their lives a little better.

Many Scots, and some Englishmen, never accepted George I and his descendants as the legitimate British monarchs. In 1715, 1719, and 1745 supporters of the exiled Stuart king, James II and VII and his son, James III and VIII, launched uprisings to reclaim the British throne from their Hanoverian enemies.

Robert Gibb's 1826 painting, Craigmillar Castle from Dalkeith Road, is an idealized vision of an early nineteenth-century Scottish agricultural landscape. His work captured the centrality of farming and animal husbandry to Scotland's economy and society, even if his scene of pastoral serenity belied the era's chaotic land reforms and social dislocation.

In 1780, James Erskine, Lord Alva commissioned the Italian-trained artist David Allan to depict the Lord of Session and his family together in musical conversation.

The Session Papers in the collections of the UVA Law Library and the Library of Congress span the era of the American Revolution and the emergence of the United States. So, too, do many of the documents held in Edinburgh libraries and archives.  

Few Scots possessed the vote before the Scottish Reform Act of 1832. A year before the Act only about 4,500 men out of a total population of over 2.6 million people were eligible to elect members of Parliament.