In the spring of 1662, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials reached into the small settlement of Lochloy, near Auldearn in Nairn, to apprehend Issobel Nicoll. On the 14th of April, her case was officially registered under the reference C/EGD/456, marking the beginning of a formal investigation into allegations of maleficium. As an inhabitant of this rural parish, Issobel found herself caught in the intense judicial scrutiny that characterized the mid-17th century, a period when local tensions and communal anxieties frequently escalated into formal witchcraft proceedings.
Following her initial identification and the documentation of the case, Issobel was moved into the procedural phase of the justice system. The existence of a corresponding record for her trial, indexed as T/LA/1845, indicates that the accusations against her moved beyond mere suspicion to a structured legal examination. While the specific testimony and the eventual verdict rendered against Issobel remain tethered to these sparse archival remnants, her journey through the court system underscores the formal processes employed in Auldearn during the height of the Restoration-era witch hunts.