In the spring of 1662, the rural parish of Fossoway and Tullibole, located within the Crook of Devon, became the site of a legal inquiry involving Margaret Lister. As a married woman residing in this region, Margaret found herself subject to the jurisdiction of the local kirk session and the civil authorities during a period when concerns regarding witchcraft were particularly heightened across the Scottish Lowlands. Her case, documented under the reference C/EGD/1485, was formally processed on April 23, 1662, marking a moment of significant intervention in her life by the judicial apparatus of the time.
The archival record for Margaret remains concise, reflecting the bureaucratic formality typical of mid-seventeenth-century ecclesiastical and criminal proceedings. While the specific nature of the allegations brought against her remains obscured by the limitations of surviving documentation—partly due to the challenges of reconciling historical secondary sources with primary legal registers—her inclusion in the 1662 records places her firmly within the broader context of the Scottish witch trials. For Margaret, this date represented the culmination of a process that moved her from the domestic sphere of the Crook of Devon into the rigorous and often perilous scrutiny of the formal court system.