In January 1630, legal proceedings were initiated in the parish of Crimond, Aberdeenshire, against a woman identified in the judicial records as Margaret Rid. The case, archived under reference C/EGD/1174, emerged during a period of heightened judicial scrutiny regarding allegations of maleficium and diabolical pacts within the North East of Scotland. Little remains of the granular details concerning the specific charges brought against her, yet the commencement of her case signifies the formal transition from local suspicion to the institutionalised machinery of the Scottish courts.
Following the initial registration of her case, Margaret was subjected to the legal processes defined by the trial records indexed as T/LA/744. In the early modern Scottish context, such proceedings typically involved the gathering of depositions from neighbours and local witnesses, followed by a formal inquiry into the accused’s conduct. For Margaret, this process represented the intersection of community anxiety and the stringent statutory framework established under the Witchcraft Act of 1563. While the ultimate resolution of her trial remains confined to the administrative silence of the archive, her case serves as a documented instance of the judicial rigour applied to residents of Crimond during the seventeenth-century witch-hunts.