In March 1662, Bessie Proffit, a resident of Coldingham in the county of Berwick, became the subject of legal proceedings that would culminate in her inclusion in the judicial records of the early modern Scottish witch trials. The process began in earnest during that month, as indicated by the documentation of her confession, which was formally recorded alongside the initiation of her case (C/EGD/1461). For women like Bessie, the legal machinery of the seventeenth century—governed by the Witchcraft Act of 1563—often moved with a distinct procedural gravity, moving from initial accusations to the formal extraction and registration of a testimony.
Following the recording of this confession, the judicial process against Bessie proceeded to a trial, registered under the reference T/JO/894. Within the socio-political climate of 1662, such trials were serious legal undertakings that demanded significant administrative attention. By the 4th of April 1662, her case had progressed through the necessary channels, marking a definitive moment in the historical record of Coldingham. While the surviving documents provide only the skeletal framework of her ordeal, they serve as a testament to the specific period of intense scrutiny that defined the mid-seventeenth-century Scottish experience.