In the summer of 1629, Malie Thorbrand, a resident of Dalkeith, found her life abruptly altered when she was formally identified by the local presbytery as one of a group of individuals suspected of witchcraft. During this period of early modern Scottish history, such ecclesiastical proceedings often served as the initial stage in a rigorous judicial process, where local church authorities scrutinized the conduct and reputation of parishioners. Within the records of the presbytery, Malie was singled out alongside several others, marking the beginning of a process that would soon see her moved from the jurisdiction of her home parish to the courts of the capital.
By July 1629, the transition from local suspicion to formal legal inquiry was complete, as Malie appeared in Edinburgh to face proceedings regarding these grave accusations. The surviving documentation, preserved under trial reference T/JO/317, records her presence in the city for the duration of the 1629 trial. Despite the existence of these official notations in the legal records of the era, the specific details regarding the testimony brought against her or the eventual verdict reached by the court remain absent from the historical archive, leaving her experience in the Edinburgh courts as a quiet but significant entry in the broader history of the 1563–1736 witch trials.