In the winter of 1637, the burgh of Banff became the site of legal proceedings against a woman named Margaret Nicol. According to the extant records of the Scottish courts, Margaret was formally brought before the authorities on January 24, 1637, amidst a period where concerns regarding witchcraft were deeply embedded within the social and judicial fabric of the realm. While the specific nature of the accusations levied against her remains obscured by the limitations of the surviving documentation, her case—indexed under the reference C/EGD/2265—serves as a stark reminder of the bureaucratic machinery that governed such investigations during the mid-seventeenth century.
The subsequent trial, recorded under the reference T/LA/2130, represents the final stage of the legal process regarding Margaret. Although the internal details of her testimony and the eventual verdict reached by the presiding officials have not been preserved in these specific archives, the existence of these records confirms that she was subjected to the formal rigor of the Scottish legal system. Through these administrative traces, Margaret remains a documented participant in one of the most volatile eras of early modern Scottish history, marking her place within the broader history of the 1563–1736 witch trials.