In the spring of 1632, Katherine Simsoun, a married woman residing in the settlement of Brenstoun within the parish of Inverkip, Renfrew, found herself drawn into the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials. On the 29th of March, her name was formally entered into the legal records under case reference C/LA/3262. This administrative act marked the commencement of a grave legal process, bringing Katherine under the scrutiny of local authorities at a time when the prosecution of alleged maleficium was a prominent feature of the early modern Scottish judicial landscape.
Following the initial registration of her case, the proceedings moved toward a formal adjudication, identified in the archives as trial T/LA/1888. While the surviving documentation remains sparse regarding the specific testimony presented against her, the transition from a recorded case to a trial indicates that Katherine was subjected to the rigorous standard procedures of the period. As a resident of the Renfrewshire area, she participated in a legal environment where such trials were increasingly common, reflecting the intersection of local community tensions and the formal religious and civil statutes governing the seventeenth-century Scottish burghs and parishes.