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.

The Enlightenment transformed Lowland Scotland into a major epicenter for education in the British Atlantic world. The universities in Edinburgh and Glasgow were renowned for training new generations of doctors, lawyers, theologists, economists, and scientists. Adam Smith studied social philosophy under Frances Hutcheson at the University of Glasgow in the 1740s while the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush earned his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh two decades later. The education that men such as Rush and future U.S.

The members of the College of Justice served both the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary, Scotland's supreme criminal court. On any given day during the term an advocate might argue a civil case before the Court of Session or defend clients or assist prosecutors in the High Court of Justiciary. Five Lords of Session sat on the criminal court as well. Occasionally, we find printed criminal papers with Session Papers.

The Scottish Enlightenment transformed cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow into major centers of intellectual inquiry, artistic expression, and print culture. Many Scottish judges and advocates such as Lord Kames, David Hume, James Boswell, and Sir Walter Scott made profound contributions to moral philosophy, economic theory, and literary form.