In January 1650, amidst a period of heightened judicial activity in Scotland, Marjorie Paterson of Newbattle, Edinburgh, was brought before the authorities to answer for the crime of witchcraft. Her case is documented within the records of the Justiciary Court (C/EGD/1850), where she appears alongside three other unnamed individuals. While the broader context of the mid-seventeenth century saw an intensification of such proceedings, the specific archival remnants for Marjorie are brief, situating her within a cluster of legal actions that moved through the courts during that month.
Despite the scarcity of surviving details regarding the specific allegations or the subsequent proceedings of a formal trial, the historical record confirms that a confession was formally extracted from Marjorie on the 24th of January, 1650. This confession remains the most significant trace of her interaction with the legal system. Although the surviving documents for her case (T/JO/386) provide no further narrative of her defense or the conclusion of her trial, her name stands as a solitary marker of the administrative machinery that defined the Scottish witch trials.