In the late summer of 1680, the legal apparatus of Argyll turned its attention to Anne McArthour, a resident of Milnetown in the parish of Dunoon. On the 31st of August, Anne was brought forward to face the grave charge of witchcraft, a process documented within the records of the Justiciary Court as case C/JO/2952. She did not stand alone in this ordeal; historical accounts indicate that she was accused alongside another woman, though the specific identity of her co-accused remains obscured by the brevity of the surviving judicial summaries.
Throughout the subsequent proceedings, registered under trial reference T/JO/1170, the stance taken by the accused remained consistent. Despite the gravity of the allegations levied against her, Anne categorically denied the accusations of witchcraft throughout her encounter with the court. The records offer no further insight into the resolution of the matter or the specific nature of the evidence brought against her, leaving her case as a stark illustration of the formal judicial inquiries into perceived sorcery that punctuated the social landscape of late seventeenth-century Scotland.