On July 12, 1629, the administrative machinery of early modern Edinburgh turned its attention toward Janet Pursell. Her case is formally recorded within the judicial archives as C/EGD/1115, marking her as one of the many individuals drawn into the ecclesiastical and legal scrutiny that defined the period. Unlike those whose accusations were documented with exhaustive testimonies or sensational narratives, Janet exists in the historical record as a figure of quiet, bureaucratic urgency; her appearance before the authorities was not an isolated incident, but a collective proceeding involving two other unidentified individuals.
The legal process surrounding Janet reached its intended culmination on the day of her trial, July 12, 1629. Documentation from the local presbytery confirms that this date was explicitly set for the hearing of her case. Despite the clear record of the trial’s scheduled occurrence, the archives remain silent regarding the specific evidence presented against her or the eventual verdict reached by the court. Janet remains a preserved name in the registers of the Scottish witch trials, a participant in a formal legal framework that left behind the date of her trial but little else of her personal history.