In February 1662, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned toward John Gely, a married man residing in Barmore on the Isle of Bute. His inclusion in the judicial proceedings appears to have been a secondary consequence of the testimonies provided by others, as he was explicitly named by two women who had already confessed to witchcraft. These confessions highlight a curious discrepancy in the record: John was linked to these women in separate contexts, each associating him with a different wife. This detail suggests that John had either been married twice or had remarried, leaving contemporary officials to navigate the complexities of his domestic history as they interrogated the accused.
The records for John’s case, indexed under C/EGD/1549, culminate in a trial documented under reference T/JO/1889. While the specific nature of the allegations brought against him remains tied to the testimonies of the two women who implicated him, his case serves as a focused example of how individuals were drawn into the broader web of communal accusations during this period. As a resident of Barmore caught within the administrative and legal scrutiny of the seventeenth-century kirk and court, John represents the lived experience of those whose lives were disrupted by the far-reaching reach of the witch-hunting trials.