In the summer of 1662, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned toward Cromarty, where a woman named Margret Simson was drawn into the judicial process. On the first of August, her case was officially recorded under the reference C/EGD/1690, marking the culmination of a period of scrutiny that had intensified during the preceding weeks. The administrative records indicate that Margret had been subjected to examination prior to her formal trial, as a confession was documented in July of that same year.
While the specific details of the proceedings against Margret remain absent from the surviving trial notes (T/JO/1014), the existence of a recorded confession serves as a stark testament to the finality of her engagement with the court. In the context of seventeenth-century Scottish jurisprudence, such confessions were often central to the prosecutorial process, acting as the primary evidence upon which the fate of the accused rested. Following this admission in July and the subsequent registration of her case in August, Margret was inextricably bound to the judicial outcomes of her community, leaving behind only these skeletal remnants of a life caught in the crosshairs of an era defined by profound anxieties and strict legal accountability.