In September 1610, the life of Grissel Gairdner, a widowed woman of middling status from Newburgh in Fife, reached a final and grim conclusion. As the widow of a former burgess, Grissel occupied a position of relative standing within her community, yet her social station did not shield her from the legal scrutiny that defined the era. Her journey through the judicial system culminated in a trial held in Edinburgh on the 7th of September, where the proceedings were marked by the testimony of an informer identified as Newton. Furthermore, records indicate that her name surfaced during the legal processes against Margaret Symsoun, suggesting that the accusations against Grissel were woven into a broader web of contemporary suspicion and interconnected testimonies.
Following the trial, the verdict delivered against Grissel was one of guilty. The sentence mandated the traditional method of execution for those convicted of witchcraft: she was to be strangled and then burned at the stake. This penalty was carried out at Castle Hill in Edinburgh. The records of her case, cataloged under C/EGD/149 and T/LA/52, stand as a stark testament to the swift and severe application of the law during this period of intense judicial focus on witchcraft in Scotland.