In the summer of 1590, Hector Munro, a resident of Ross, faced the gravity of a judicial inquiry into the practice of witchcraft. The legal proceedings against Hector began with a preliminary diet on June 23, 1590, though the court opted to continue the case for exactly one month. By July 22, 1590, he stood trial in Edinburgh to answer to the accusations leveled against him. The records from these proceedings indicate that his case was inextricably linked to a wider web of allegations, as he had been named as an accomplice in the testimonies of several other individuals, including John McConeill-Gar, the wife of John McConeill-Gar, the wife of John Bane, and Marioun Neyn Donald McIngaruch.
Despite the persistent associations made by these other accused parties, the culmination of the legal process in Edinburgh resulted in a verdict of not guilty for Hector. The court records confirm that after the month-long postponement and the subsequent trial, he was cleared of the charges brought before him. This resolution provides a glimpse into the complexities of the period’s judicial system, where individuals were frequently implicated by their peers within the heightened climate of the late sixteenth-century witch trials, yet faced distinct outcomes based on the evidence presented in court.
