On October 6, 1597, the judicial records of Fife document the entry of Fritte Gutter, a resident of the coastal burgh of Pittenweem, into the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials. As a woman living in a period of intense religious and social upheaval, Fritte found her life intersected by the mechanisms of the state and the kirk, which were then actively pursuing investigations into suspected witchcraft under the legislative framework established by the Witchcraft Act of 1563.
The surviving entry for Fritte, cataloged under C/EGD/2510, serves as a brief but significant archival marker of her experience. While the specific nature of the allegations brought against her remains unrecorded in this primary notation, her presence in the legal record places her within the broader history of the 1597 Scottish witch hunt, a period characterized by a surge in commissions for the prosecution of accused individuals. Though the details of Fritte’s testimony or the eventual outcome of her case are not elaborated upon in the available documentation, her case remains a vital fragment of the documented history of Pittenweem during the late sixteenth century.