In May 1662, the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned toward Bute, where Issobell McCan was brought before the authorities to answer for the grave charge of witchcraft. Her legal journey began with the formal opening of her case (C/EGD/1530) on the 7th of May, marking the start of a process that would culminate in a formal trial, indexed in the records as T/JO/928. While the specific nature of the accusations brought against her—the particular acts of maleficence or diabolical pacts alleged by her neighbors—remains absent from the surviving documents, the process moved with the urgency characteristic of the period’s legal proceedings.
Within that same month of May, the record confirms that Issobell provided a formal confession. In the context of seventeenth-century Scottish jurisprudence, such a statement served as the cornerstone of the prosecution, solidifying the legal basis for the subsequent trial proceedings. Although the administrative notes for her trial offer no further elaboration on the final verdict or the specific evidence presented in the courtroom, the survival of her case file preserves the brief, stark timeline of Issobell’s experience within the judicial system during the height of the Restoration-era witch hunts.