In November 1679, the records of the Scottish judiciary noted the case of Margaret Kincaid, a woman residing in the royal burgh of Linlithgow. Margaret was drawn into the mechanisms of the Scottish legal system amidst a period characterized by heightened scrutiny of alleged diabolical activity. As detailed in case file C/LA/3079, her transition from the local community to the jurisdiction of the courts was formalized on the 27th of November, initiating a legal process that would eventually reach the trial phase recorded under T/LA/1472.
Despite the initiation of these proceedings, the progress of the trial was interrupted by the physical realities of Margaret’s confinement. Before a verdict could be rendered or the legal process brought to its formal conclusion, she died while being held in prison. Her death brought a sudden end to her involvement in the legal machinery of the era, leaving her case as one of the many archival remnants that document the rigorous, and often fatal, nature of seventeenth-century judicial oversight regarding witchcraft accusations.