In the spring of 1662, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials reached into the community of Keighs on the Isle of Bute to secure the apprehension of Jonet NcIntyre. Recorded in the court archives under case number C/JO/3271, Jonet was a married woman whose life was irrevocably altered on March 26, 1662, when formal proceedings were initiated against her. This period marked a peak in the intensity of such prosecutions across Scotland, as local kirk sessions and secular courts acted with increasing fervor to address perceived supernatural threats to the social and spiritual order.
Following the initial filing of her case, Jonet was processed through the judicial system under trial reference T/JO/1929. The records provide only the stark, skeletal framework of her experience—her residence in Keighs, her marital status, and the precise dating of her legal involvement—yet they underscore the profound vulnerability of women within the early modern judicial landscape. As her trial moved forward, Jonet became part of a documented history of state-sanctioned scrutiny that defined the experiences of many individuals during this turbulent seventeenth-century era.