In January 1662, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned toward Bute, where a woman named Marie More NcCuill was brought before the authorities to answer for allegations of witchcraft. The records of the Justiciary Court, specifically documented under case number C/JO/3251, identify her residence as the island of Bute, placing her within a period of intense judicial scrutiny regarding the practice of maleficium and communion with the diabolical. On January 28, 1662, her case was officially registered, marking the beginning of the formal processes that would lead to her trial under reference T/JO/1902.
The procedural journey Marie underwent reflects the structured nature of seventeenth-century legal responses to perceived supernatural threats. As the judicial process moved from the initial registration of her case to the subsequent trial, Marie was subjected to the scrutiny of the local and regional courts that sought to establish the veracity of the charges leveled against her. While the archival records are sparse in their narrative detail, they stand as a testament to the gravity with which the Scottish legal system approached individuals like Marie, whose lives were irrevocably altered by the strictures of the ecclesiastical and civil laws governing the realm during this period.