On February 26, 1650, a man identified in the legal records only by the surname Bargans was brought before the authorities in the burgh of Renfrew. Residing within this parish, which saw heightened scrutiny during the intense witch-hunt wave of the mid-seventeenth century, Bargans became the subject of a formal judicial process recorded under case reference C/EGD/1361. The archival documentation provides a stark, administrative view of a man caught within the mechanisms of the Scottish kirk and state apparatus, reflecting the precarious social and legal climate that defined the era of the Great Scottish Witch Hunt.
Following his initial apprehension, the process against him culminated in trial T/LA/1099. While the brevity of the surviving records leaves the specific nature of the allegations against Bargans silent, the existence of a formal trial indicates that his case passed through the standard rigors of seventeenth-century legal procedure. For Bargans, the transition from local suspicion to the courtroom represented a significant moment in the institutional handling of witchcraft accusations in Renfrew, marking a definitive encounter with the judicial authorities of the period.