In the spring of 1658, Jonnet Murdock, a resident of the parish of Craigie in Ayr, found herself drawn into the judicial machinery that swept through the region during that year. On 31 March 1658, a summons was issued via a *porteous roll*—the formal legal instrument used in Scotland to notify individuals of the crimes for which they were to stand trial. Jonnet was not alone in this experience; she was summoned as part of a wider collective group of accused persons, all of whom were required to answer to the court in Ayr.
On 6 April 1658, the judicial proceedings reached their focus at the Ayr court. The official court lists for that date confirm that Jonnet appeared before the magistrates to answer the charges laid against her. Within the context of the Scottish legal system of the mid-seventeenth century, the appearance of her name in the court records alongside her fellow parishioners marks the formal intersection of her life with the statutes governing witchcraft trials, a process that adhered to the structured, if severe, legal protocols of the period.