The case is known from the Lord's own court books, the Liber Scaccarii and the Liber Placitorum for 1616 and 1617, which are held by Manx National Heritage and were read for this site from the FamilySearch images in September 2026. It does not appear in Train's chapter on Manx superstitions or in Moore's Folk-lore of the Isle of Man, both of which print later and milder cases from the church records. Margaret yne Quane and her son John Cubon lived at Lambfell in the parish of Kirk German, in Glenfaba sheading. The word yne in her name is Manx inneen, daughter, so she carried her birth family's name through her marriage, as married women in these books commonly did. Her husband is not named anywhere in the record. John Cubon held a four shilling share of the quarterland of Lambfell in the 1617 setting roll, alongside a senior John Cubon and two John Cotters, with a share in a mill and a share of the waste, so he was an adult landholder rather than the child of the later published accounts.

The record opens on 20 November 1616 with a memorandum in the Liber Scaccarii. Margaret Quane of Kirk German had been committed to prison in Castle Rushen for charms used and practised by her tending to sorcery and witchcraft, as appeared by the examinations of divers persons upon oath. She was now bailed at the instance of two neighbours, William Stevenson and Patrick Quaile, each bound in ten pounds that she would appear at the next Head Court of gaol delivery and abide the censure of the law. On 22 December two more neighbours, Thomas Kelly and Hugh Cayne, entered the same bond for John Cubon, son of the aforesaid Margaret Quane. On 28 December both were sent back to prison by the officers of the spiritual court, which had by its own law and trial found them guilty of witchcraft and sorcery. On 28 February 1617 the church delivered them to the Lord's gaol by its censure. The procedure is the one the Spiritual Laws prescribed, and which Moore printed in 1891: presentment to the Chapter Quest, the Bishop's prison while a jury of the parish inquired, and delivery to the Lord's gaol and court if a notorious fault was proved.

On 2 June 1617 a list of the names of the twenty-four Keys was drawn up and bound in with the bail entries. The next day the Head Court of gaol delivery sat at Castle Rushen before Captain Robert Molyneux, the Comptroller John Halsall and the Deemsters Thomas Sansbury and Ewan Christian. Sir William Crowe the Vicar General, Sir John Cosnahan and Sir Hugh Cannell the Register showed their proceedings in writing, which were read openly in the face of the court. The Deemsters, howbeit, for their better satisfaction to have a more formal and judicial trial according to law, advised with the twenty-four Keys, who consulted that Margaret should have a further public trial by another jury. A jury of twelve was empanelled from every sheading but Rushen, with Thomas Quirk sitting for German. She was brought to the bar and put herself to the jury, who found her guilty of sorcery and witchcraft, and the Deemsters pronounced that she should be taken by the Coroner of Glenfaba to the place of execution and there burned till the life departed from the body. At the same court John Cubon appeared, put himself to the trial of the jury now empanelled in his own right, was found guilty, and was sentenced in the same form. The record calls him plainly her son and gives no age.

The man who suspected them is named in the Glenfaba pleas of May 1617, where the moar of Kirk German presented the bloodsheds of the parish. Phillip Costen had drawn blood from Phillip Cubon, from John Cubon and from Margaret Quane. A note in the margin releases him by consent of the court of all the bloodwipes upon the Cubons and yne Quane, because he avouched that he did it in defence of his life, or to avoid other harm that might befall him by their witchcraft, wherewith they were by him suspected and against some of them lately proved. The court recorded the act and the reason given for it, and accepted them. It did not record a belief. Rhys, collecting on the Island about 1890, was told that if you could draw blood, however little, from a witch or from one with the evil eye, they lost the power of harming you, and that formerly this was sometimes acted upon, the man who fancied himself in danger sidling up to another on leaving church and inflicting a slight scratch. The 1617 entry and the 1890 belief are set side by side here, nearly three centuries apart, and the reader can judge the resemblance.

The books follow John Cubon to the end. The Receiver's Kirk German fines for 1617 leave his line blank, with the note that his goods had fallen to the Lord. In the Glenfaba pleas of October 1617 a Thomas Cubon sued John Cotter for the four shilling parcel and lost, because Cotter had bought the ground in the Lord's right, to whom it fell due by the death of John Cubon, convicted for witchcraft. The Kirk German setting quest of 1619, sworn by four neighbours, two of whom had been in the case from the start, struck him from Lambfell for that the ground by his execution in the law fell due to the Lord, and entered Cotter as tenant on a composition of twenty shillings. For Margaret the record ends with the sentence. She held no land, so no fiscal or manorial entry had cause to name her again, and her execution is inferred from the sentence and from her son's, not documented. The date and place of either execution are recorded nowhere. Neither the temporal books nor the recited church proceedings name any act, victim or harm, only charms tending to sorcery at her committal and sorcery and witchcraft at the verdict.