The judicial record concerning James Beverley, a resident of Aberdeen, remains a fragmentary witness to the pervasive legal scrutiny of the late seventeenth century. In 1671, James was brought before the authorities under an accusation of witchcraft, an event marked in the archival register as case C/EGD/595. Despite his inclusion in the historical documentation of the period, the specific circumstances surrounding his arrest and the nature of the allegations brought against him were not preserved in the extant papers of the Justiciary Court.
The administrative trail for James is further complicated by inconsistencies in the early scholarly attempts to catalogue these proceedings. While previous research, notably by Larner et al., attempted to locate his case within the files of the Justiciary Court (JC26/38/41), subsequent surveys of the records held within that specific box failed to confirm the documentation. Consequently, while his name survives in the official annals of those subjected to the machinery of the witch trials, the final disposition of his case—whether it resulted in a trial, a dismissal, or some other procedural resolution—remains lost to history.