In July 1658, the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned toward Clackmannan, where James Hudstoun was brought before the authorities to face accusations of witchcraft. The records regarding his case, archived under C/EGD/289, mark the beginning of a legal process that would see him subjected to the rigours of the seventeenth-century Scottish court system. On the 22nd of July, his initial examination took place, setting in motion a series of proceedings that ultimately led to his trial under the reference T/LA/1612.
As an inhabitant of Clackmannan, James was caught within a period of heightened judicial activity regarding suspected diabolical activity. While the specific nature of the charges brought against him—or the ultimate verdict reached by the assize—remains confined to the terse administrative entries of the period, his case stands as a formal fragment of the era's legal landscape. James remains a documented subject of these trials, his name preserved in the archives as part of the broader history of criminal prosecution in mid-seventeenth-century Scotland.