In 1569, a woman identified in the legal records as Unknown Neville became the subject of judicial scrutiny within the county of Fife. While the surviving documentation for this case, indexed under C/EGD/2083, remains sparse, historians have noted the possibility that this individual may be synonymous with the better-documented figure known as NicNiven. Given the period, Neville’s encounter with the Scottish legal system would have occurred during a formative era for the prosecution of witchcraft, reflecting the shifting social and religious tensions of sixteenth-century Fife.
The administrative trail for Neville is limited, constrained by the reliance on secondary printed sources that highlight the complexities of tracing early modern Scottish witch trials. As a result, the specific nature of the accusations brought against her—or the ultimate outcome of the proceedings—remains obscured by the passage of time. The case serves as an example of the archival challenges inherent in studying the early history of the witch-hunts, where the names and identities of those caught in the legal process are sometimes rendered as fragments in the historical record.