Janet Scot

In the coastal burgh of Dysart, Fife, the legal machinery of early modern Scotland turned toward Janet Scot in the spring of 1630. On the 11th of March, her name was officially entered into the court records under case reference C/EGD/1193, marking the beginning of a formal investigation into allegations of witchcraft. Such proceedings were characteristic of the period, where local communities and kirk sessions frequently scrutinized individuals whose actions or misfortunes were interpreted through the lens of maleficium.

The subsequent trial, recorded under T/LA/722, placed Janet at the center of a judicial process that defined the social and religious tensions of seventeenth-century Scotland. While the surviving documentation provides only the skeletal framework of these proceedings, the transition from the initial entry to the trial reflects the rigorous application of the Witchcraft Act of 1563. As the court examined the evidence brought against her, Janet became a subject of the state’s efforts to maintain spiritual and civil order within the parish of Dysart, marking her place in the extensive archival history of the Scottish witch trials.