Laing, Malcolm

(1762-1818)

Was a country gentleman in Orkney. He completed Henry's History of Great Britain, and wrote a History of Scotland from the Union of the Crowns to the Union of the Kingdoms (1802). He was an assailant of the authenticity of the Ossianic poems, and wrote a dissertation on the Participation of Mary Queen of Scots in the Murder of Darnley. He did much to improve the agriculture of Orkney.