In September 1662, Ninian Dowie Vic Finley, a resident of Inverness, became caught in the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials. His arrest was not an isolated incident, but part of a wider conflict involving a group of fifteen individuals associated with the McLean family. These individuals were formally accused of the crime of witchcraft by members of the Chisholm family, a record that reflects the intense local tensions and kinship-based accusations that frequently characterized such proceedings in seventeenth-century Scotland.
The legal process against Ninian moved through the Scottish judicial system under the reference T/JO/997. While the surviving records confirm his place within this group of fifteen defendants and note the specific nature of the accusations brought by the Chisholms, the detailed testimonies and final outcomes of the trial proceedings remain absent from the historical archive. Consequently, Ninian’s experience stands as a testament to a specific moment of social discord in Inverness, preserved through the administrative formalities of the high court.