In November 1649, the judicial machinery of seventeenth-century Scotland turned its attention toward Katherine Hyislop, a resident of Stanhope in the county of Peebles. Her case, documented under the reference C/EGD/2033, emerged during a period of heightened concern regarding witchcraft, as local authorities grappled with perceived spiritual and communal threats. On the sixth of that month, the formal proceedings against Katherine began, marking the start of a legal process that would see her moved through the mechanisms of the Scottish kirk and state courts.
The historical trail leads from this initial record to her subsequent appearance in court under the trial reference T/LA/2040. While the surviving documentation provides a stark outline of her encounter with the law, it preserves the formal transition of Katherine from an accused woman in a rural parish to a participant in the rigorous procedures of the 1649 judicial cycle. Though the specific details of her testimony and the testimonies brought against her remain obscured by time, her case remains a singular point of evidence for the persistence of witch-trial litigation in the Peeblesshire region during the mid-seventeenth century.