In April 1568, James Kilgour, a resident of Perth originally from the district of Stormont in Perthshire, found himself at the centre of a formal legal proceeding regarding the charge of witchcraft. This case, documented under the reference C/LA/3400, emerged during a period of intensifying judicial scrutiny in Scotland, as the authorities sought to regulate activities perceived to be beyond the bounds of accepted religious and social order. Little remains to detail the specific accusations levelled against James, yet the existence of a formal trial record, T/LA/2268, confirms that the matter progressed beyond a mere suspicion to a judicial examination within the local courts.
As the proceedings unfolded, the focus remained on the legal status of James and the nature of the evidence brought before the court. The records provide no further biographical information regarding his station in life or the specific allegations that precipitated his appearance. By situating his case in the spring of 1568, historians can place him among those individuals whose experiences reflect the administrative and punitive processes of the early modern Scottish legal system during the initial decades following the Reformation.