In the winter of 1629, the judicial machinery of the Scottish state focused its attention upon Janet Hendersoun, a resident of the parish of Lilliesleaf in the county of Selkirk. On 24 February of that year, formal proceedings were initiated against her under case reference C/EGD/1088. This legal process occurred during a period of heightened sensitivity toward the crime of witchcraft, where the accused were subject to the rigorous scrutiny of both local civil authorities and ecclesiastical bodies tasked with identifying perceived deviations from the established social and spiritual order.
Following the initial registration of her case, Janet was brought to trial under the administrative designation T/LA/653. As was customary for those appearing before the courts in this era, she faced the gravity of a legal system that treated charges of witchcraft as matters of severe communal concern. While the specific testimony or the ultimate outcome of the proceedings against Janet remains confined to the sparse documentation of these archival records, her case stands as a documented instance of the legal processes that defined the experience of those individuals swept into the Scottish witch trials of the seventeenth century.