In February 1633, the legal machinery of the seventeenth-century Scottish witch trials turned toward Glenmuick, Aberdeen, to address the case of Katharine Ewan. Records held under the designation C/LA/3302 identify Katharine as a resident of this parish, marking the beginning of an official inquiry into allegations of witchcraft leveled against her. At this time, the judicial process in Aberdeen was strictly formalised, involving local presbyterial oversight and the subsequent administrative processing required to move a case from initial accusation to a formal hearing.
Following the initial entry of her name into the legal record, Katharine was subject to the procedural scrutiny associated with trial T/LA/2091. While the brevity of the surviving documentation characterises many such cases from this period, the existence of both a case file and a distinct trial reference indicates that she was held to account under the contemporary statutes governing sorcery and maleficium. These proceedings represent the intersection of local suspicion and the rigorous, often bureaucratic, legal framework that defined the hunt for those accused of witchcraft in the North East of Scotland during the early seventeenth century.