In the spring of 1650, the legal machinery of the Scottish kirk and state turned toward Mali Laidlaw, a resident of Crawford, or Craufurddouglas, in Lanark. On March 27 of that year, Mali was formally brought before the authorities to answer for allegations of witchcraft, a process captured in the official case files preserved under reference C/EGD/1820. The records of her trial, cataloged as T/JO/1117, outline the gravity of the accusations directed against her, marking a period of intense scrutiny within her local parish.
The charges leveled against Mali centered specifically on the destruction of property, with the prosecution focusing on the alleged harm done to livestock. In the agrarian context of seventeenth-century Lanark, the loss of animals was a matter of significant economic and communal distress, frequently becoming the focal point for neighborhood suspicion and legal action. While the specific nature of the misfortune that befell these animals is not elaborated upon in the surviving documentation, the accusation that Mali had caused such damage through supernatural means provided the basis for the proceedings brought against her.