In the spring of 1568, the legal records of Forfar identify the case of Maldye Sturrok, a woman residing within the parishes of Arbroath and St Vigeans. At a time when the Scottish legal system was beginning to formalize its approach to charges of maleficium following the Witchcraft Act of 1563, Maldye was brought into the judicial process under case reference C/LA/3379. The archival documentation remains sparse regarding the specific nature of the allegations levelled against her, leaving the precise circumstances of her arrest and the testimonies of her accusers confined to the administrative fragments of the era.
Following the initial proceedings, Maldye was committed to trial under reference T/LA/2247. The legal machinery of the sixteenth century moved with particular gravity in such matters, placing individuals like Maldye before local magistrates or commissioners empowered to weigh evidence of supernatural intervention in daily life. While the surviving records do not detail the outcome of her trial or the specific depositions provided by the community in Arbroath and St Vigeans, her name stands as a historical marker of the anxieties and judicial rigour that characterized the early decades of the Scottish witch trials.