In the autumn of 1649, Isobel Brotherstane, a resident of Birkinsyde in the parish of Legerwood, found herself drawn into the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials. On October 2, 1649, legal proceedings were initiated against her, recorded under case file C/EGD/1977. At this time, Scotland was experiencing a period of intense religious and social upheaval, and the legal apparatus of the state and church had begun to scrutinize local communities with heightened vigilance.
The documentation of her case culminates in a formal trial (T/LA/2000) conducted in the vicinity of Lauder. While the specific nature of the charges brought against Isobel remains absent from these surviving administrative fragments, her ordeal serves as a stark reflection of the judicial climate in Berwickshire during the mid-seventeenth century. These records, preserved within the institutional archives of the period, mark the formal intersection of Isobel’s life with the mechanisms of the Scottish courts, capturing the precise moment she was processed through the legal framework of the era.