In the spring of 1671, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned its attention to Elspeth Thomson, a resident of Fortrie in the parish of Inverkeithny, Banff. On the 3rd of April, she was brought before the authorities to answer for the grave charge of witchcraft. The records of the case, indexed under C/EGD/598, situate Elspeth within a period of heightened judicial scrutiny in the north-east of Scotland, where local sessions and commissions frequently investigated allegations of malefice against neighbors and members of the community.
The subsequent trial, recorded under reference T/LA/1157, took place in the royal burgh of Banff on the same day as the initial proceedings. Despite the formal documentation of the court's actions, the archival trail for Elspeth effectively ceases at this point. The historical record provides no indication of the final verdict or the eventual outcome of the trial, leaving the conclusion of her encounter with the seventeenth-century judiciary entirely silent.