On the 13th of May 1617, the legal machinery of early modern Edinburgh turned its attention to Jonet Short, as recorded in the judicial files preserved under reference C/EGD/2226. Little remains of the specific allegations brought against her within the surviving archives, leaving her case as one of the many fragments of the broader Scottish witch trials that spanned from 1563 to 1736. Her entry into the historical record marks the beginning of a formal investigation, a process defined by the rigid legal and ecclesiastical structures of the era which governed how such accusations were processed within the capital.
The records for Jonet offer a brief, clinical glimpse into the gravity of her situation during the spring of 1617. While the specific nature of the suspicions held against her—whether they concerned maleficium, community discord, or spectral involvement—remains obscured by the passage of time, the documentation confirms her residence in Edinburgh at the time of her arrest. As a figure caught within this complex social and judicial framework, Jonet serves as a somber reminder of the thousands of lives intersected by these trials, highlighting the intersection of local tension and state-sanctioned scrutiny in seventeenth-century Scotland.