In November 1628, Agnes nein Donald, a resident of Bruach in the parish of Logie, Ross, became the subject of a legal proceeding that would place her firmly within the shadow of Scotland’s early modern witch trials. Recorded in the judicial archives as case C/EGD/1052, Agnes was brought before the authorities on the 18th of November to answer for accusations of witchcraft. The legal process initiated against her moved swiftly from this preliminary stage toward a formal trial, documented under the reference T/LA/598.
Little survives in the extant records regarding the specific nature of the charges brought against Agnes, nor do the documents detail the final outcome of her ordeal. However, her case serves as a precise administrative snapshot of the judicial mechanisms at work in seventeenth-century Ross. By navigating the intersection of local community testimony and the formal machinery of the Scottish courts, the record of Agnes remains a significant, albeit brief, testament to the legal tensions and anxieties prevalent in the Highlands during this period.