On August 4, 1657, Janet Bruce, a resident of Haddington, appeared before the authorities amidst the intense judicial climate of mid-seventeenth-century Scotland. Her case, documented under the reference C/EGD/235, marks her entry into the formal legal machinery of the era. The proximity of her residence to the capital suggests a process that drew upon the central judicial oversight prevalent during this period, as the state sought to categorize and address allegations of witchcraft through established institutional frameworks.
The subsequent trial, recorded as T/LA/1947, was held in Edinburgh on the same day as the initial case documentation. Despite being listed on a high court index, Janet’s proceedings remain elusive within the extant Books of Adjournal, the official record of criminal trials before the High Court of Justiciary. This absence in the primary legal volumes leaves the specific nature of the evidence brought against Janet, as well as the final outcome of her trial, unrecorded in the surviving corpus of judicial documentation.