In the late spring of 1661, Bessie Todrig of Bolton, Haddington, became enmeshed in the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials. On May 28, 1661, Bessie provided a confession to the authorities, a document that would serve as the cornerstone of the judicial proceedings brought against her just three days later, on May 31. Her case, documented under reference C/EGD/1367, was fundamentally defined by the charge of attending a meeting of witches, a significant accusation within the socio-religious climate of seventeenth-century East Lothian.
The legal jeopardy surrounding Bessie extended beyond her own primary examinations. During the investigations into other local residents, she was explicitly named as an accomplice by three other women: Elspeth Baillie, Elizabeth Lawsone, and Issobell Ritchardsone. While the specific trial notes (T/JO/1022 and T/JO/1032) contain no surviving narrative details of the court proceedings themselves, the interconnected nature of these testimonies illustrates the communal and collaborative context in which the accusations against Bessie were framed by her contemporaries.