In the late autumn of 1649, the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch-hunts reached into the settlement of Overhartstaine in Peebles, identifying Isobel Greene as a subject of legal scrutiny. On the 6th of November, court officials formally opened case C/EGD/2022, documenting the charges brought against her. As was the standard procedure for the period, the transition from accusation to the formal proceedings of trial followed shortly thereafter, recorded under reference T/LA/2038.
The records for Isobel provide a clear, if stark, snapshot of the administrative rigor applied to such cases during this era. As a resident of Overhartstaine, Isobel found her life suddenly intersected by the centralized authority of the Scottish courts, which meticulously logged her identity and the dates of her legal journey. While the surviving documentation focuses primarily on the bureaucratic lifecycle of the trial, it preserves her place within the history of the 17th-century witch trials, marking her encounter with a judicial system that sought to categorize and resolve allegations of supernatural transgression.