In the spring of 1658, Annabell Gottray, a resident of Irvine in Ayrshire, became ensnared in the legal mechanisms of the Scottish witch trials. Her case appears in the formal administrative records under reference C/EGD/257, which document her involvement in the judicial proceedings of that year. Alongside a wider group of individuals similarly summoned for trial, Annabell was subjected to the scrutiny of the Ayr Court, a process marked by the issuance of Porteous Rolls—the formal indictments that set the machinery of the law into motion.
The records indicate that Annabell was summoned to appear for trial on 6 April 1658, a date shared by several others within the same cluster of accusations. A preceding Porteous Roll, dated 31 March 1658, confirms that the group had been formally cited to face the court’s judgment. As part of this judicial cohort, Annabell was processed through the rigorous legal requirements of the time, leaving behind a documentary footprint that captures this significant moment of confrontation between the accused and the seventeenth-century Scottish legal system.