In the autumn of 1649, legal records from the Presbytery of Peebles document the case of Anna Alexander, a married woman residing in the settlement of Ladieude. On November 6, Anna was brought before local authorities to face charges concerning allegations of witchcraft, a process formally recorded under case reference C/EGD/2060. The administrative movement of her case into the judicial system is confirmed by the subsequent trial record, cataloged as T/LA/2020, which marks the transition of these suspicions into a formal legal proceeding.
At this stage in the mid-17th century, such proceedings were often deeply intertwined with local community tensions and the ecclesiastical oversight of the Scottish Kirk. The records for Anna provide the essential markers of her identity and the timeline of her involvement with the courts, grounding her experience in the specific bureaucratic landscape of the period. Though the details of the testimony against her remain within the archival files of the trial itself, the documentation confirms that Anna was subjected to the full rigor of the Scottish legal apparatus during a time of heightened scrutiny regarding the perceived influence of the supernatural in daily life.