Restoration in Scotland in the context of Irish monarchy

There are fifteen universities based in Scotland, the Open University, and three other institutions of higher education.

The first university in Scotland was the University of St Andrews, founded in 1413, with St John's College being added in 1418 and St Salvator's College in 1450. The other great bishoprics followed, with the University of Glasgow being founded in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. St Leonard's College was founded at St Andrews in 1511 and St John's College was re-founded in 1538 as St Mary's College. Public lectures that were established in Edinburgh in the 1540s would eventually become the University of Edinburgh in 1582. A university briefly existed in Fraserburgh between 1592 and 1605. In 1641, the two colleges at Aberdeen were united by decree of Charles I (r. 1625–49), to form the ‘King Charles University of Aberdeen’. They were demerged after the Restoration in 1661. In 1747 St Leonard's College in St Andrews was merged into St Salvator's College to form the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard. A new college of St Andrews was opened in Dundee in 1883, though initially an independent institution. The two colleges at Aberdeen were considered too small to be viable and they were restructured as the University of Aberdeen in 1860. Marischal College was rebuilt in the Gothic style from 1900. The University of Edinburgh was taken out of the care of the city and established on a similar basis to the other ancient universities.

In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft (Scottish Gaelic: buidseachd) took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.

An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period, a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were five major series of trials in 1590–91, 1597, 1628–31, 1649–50 and 1661–62. Seventy-five per cent of the accused were women. Modern estimates indicate that more than 1,500 persons were executed; most were strangled and then burned. The hunts subsided under English occupation after the Civil Wars during the period of the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, but returned after the Restoration in 1660, causing some alarm and leading to the Privy Council of Scotland limiting arrests, prosecutions and torture. There was also growing scepticism in the later seventeenth century, while some of the factors that may have contributed to the trials, such as economic distress, subsided. Although there were occasional local outbreaks of witch-hunting, the last recorded executions were in 1706 and the last trial in 1727. The Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707, and the unified British parliament repealed the 1563 act in 1736.

There are fifteen universities in Scotland and three other institutions of higher education that have the authority to award academic degrees.

The first university college in Scotland was founded at St John's College, St Andrews in 1418 by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St Andrews. St Salvator's College was added to St Andrews in 1450. The University of Glasgow was founded in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen in 1495. St Leonard's College was founded in St Andrews in 1511 and St John's College was re-founded as St Mary's College, St Andrews in 1538, as a Humanist academy for the training of clerics. Public lectures that were established in Edinburgh in the 1540s, would eventually become the University of Edinburgh in 1582. After the Reformation, Scotland's universities underwent a series of reforms associated with Andrew Melville. After the Restoration there was a purge of Presbyterians from the universities, but most of the intellectual advances of the preceding period were preserved. The Scottish university colleges recovered from the disruption of the civil war years and Restoration with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high-quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.