In February 1645, Jonnet McKennan, a married woman residing in Balmurrie, Wigtown, became the subject of legal scrutiny under the records catalogued as case C/EGD/1300. Her involvement in the judicial system of the seventeenth century was formalised on the 25th of that month, marking the beginning of a process that would transition from an initial accusation to the judicial proceedings of a formal trial.
The subsequent trial, recorded under reference T/LA/1091, serves as the primary historical testament to Jonnet’s experience within the Scottish legal framework of the period. While the archival documentation captures the procedural mechanisms applied to her case—situating her within the specific geography of Wigtown and the heightened period of witch-hunting in mid-seventeenth-century Scotland—it remains a stark record of the administrative and legal pressures brought to bear upon her life in Balmurrie.