In the spring of 1634, Isabel Sinclair, a married woman residing in the coastal settlement of Eyemouth, Berwick, became the subject of legal proceedings concerning allegations of witchcraft. Her case, documented under reference C/EGD/1270, reached a critical juncture on the 4th of June of that year, marking the commencement of an intensive judicial process. The legal path Isabel followed is evidenced by two distinct trial records, T/LA/155 and T/LA/156, which indicate that her circumstances were brought before the formal mechanisms of the Scottish courts during a period when such accusations were handled with rigorous—and often fatal—procedural scrutiny.
The records provide little in the way of Isabel’s personal testimony or the specific nature of the charges levied against her, yet they situate her firmly within the bureaucratic machinery of the early seventeenth-century Scottish witch trials. As a resident of the Borders region, Isabel found herself caught in the broader social and legal currents of the 1563–1736 era, where local communal tensions were frequently adjudicated through the lens of the witchcraft statutes. The existence of these two separate trial entries suggests that her legal ordeal was multifaceted, requiring successive hearings as the authorities navigated the complexities of her case according to the legal standards of the time.