In 1645, Jeane Buchane, a resident of the burgh of Cupar in Fife, found herself at the centre of a formal legal proceeding regarding the charge of witchcraft. Her case, documented under reference C/EGD/2350, unfolded during a period of heightened judicial activity concerning allegations of maleficium throughout the Scottish lowlands. As a resident of one of Fife’s significant administrative centres, Jeane was subject to the rigorous scrutiny of the local ecclesiastical and civil authorities tasked with identifying those deemed to be in league with diabolical forces.
Following her initial designation in the record, the legal process concerning Jeane proceeded to the trial phase, identified in the court archives as T/JO/1190. While the surviving documentation of these proceedings provides a skeletal framework of her experience within the seventeenth-century Scottish justice system, it captures the critical intersection of community suspicion and the formal administration of the law. Through these records, Jeane remains a figure defined by the specific circumstances of her 1645 prosecution, marking her place within the documented history of witch trials in the kingdom of Scotland.