In the spring of 1662, the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials reached into the Perthshire parish of Dunning to apprehend Issobell Goold. On the 7th of May, the legal proceedings against her were formally inaugurated under the reference C/EGD/1509. As an inhabitant of Dunning, Issobell found herself caught within the intensifying fervor of the mid-seventeenth-century witch-hunts, a period marked by a surge in state-sanctioned scrutiny of those suspected of diabolical pacts or the use of harmful occult arts.
The administrative records surrounding her case, preserved in the trial documentation T/JO/944, offer a stark, skeletal glimpse into the legal trajectory she endured. While the surviving archives do not provide the specific nature of the allegations brought against her or the subsequent testimonies presented in court, the presence of these records confirms that Issobell was subjected to the formal processes of the Scottish criminal justice system. Her case remains a documented instance of the legal mechanisms employed during this era to address accusations of witchcraft within the local community.