He was made a prisoner for holding conventicles, and ordered to be liberated from the Edinburgh Tolbooth 4 July 1679.
Fithie was chaplain of Trinity Hospital, Edinburgh, a situation to which he was elected by the Town Council on 20 January 1671.
On this account he was apprehended, and lay in one of the jails of Edinburgh for some time previous to July 1679, when he was released.
[5] He was released in March 1686 by an order of the Council, in consideration of his own ill health, and the afflicted condition of his family.
This has led Dr Crichton, in his list of the Bass prisoners annexed to his Memoirs of Mr John Blackadder, erroneously to suppose that the person whom Wodrow calls in that place " James Forthie," is different from " James Futhy," whose imprisonment in the Bass in 1685, is recorded by that historian in vol iv.