In the summer of 1628, Margaret Ridpeth, a resident of the coastal town of Prestonpans in Haddingtonshire, became the subject of legal proceedings that would mark her entry into the formal judicial records of the Scottish witch trials. On July 3, 1628, Margaret was formally accused under the case file C/EGD/1015, a development that initiated the complex machinery of early modern Scottish law. Her case highlights the recurring scrutiny faced by women within the social and religious landscape of the seventeenth-century Lothians, where local governance and ecclesiastical authorities frequently addressed allegations of maleficium through the established courts.
Following the initial accusation, Margaret was brought to trial under the record T/LA/166. While the specific nature of the evidence brought against her remains confined to these archival citations, the process reflects the rigorous, documented legal pathway that characterized the prosecution of witchcraft during this period. For Margaret, the progression from an accused individual in Prestonpans to a named defendant in a formal trial underscores the gravity with which the community and the judiciary approached such charges during the mid-reign of Charles I.