In the late summer of 1661, the life of Margaret Hutchison, a 65-year-old resident of Duddingston, reached a tragic and paradoxical conclusion. A woman of middling socioeconomic status, Margaret had lived in the shadow of a local reputation for witchcraft that stretched back forty years. Though her husband served as a reader—a position of some standing within the church—her social connections could not shield her from the mounting legal pressures of the time. By July 1661, she had provided a formal confession, and her name began to appear repeatedly in the testimonies of others accused of similar practices, including Marjorie Fairwell, Agnes Bartill, and John Scot, all of whom identified her as an accomplice.
The legal proceedings against Margaret were marked by an unusual and distressing volatility. During her initial trial in Edinburgh on August 20, the assize—composed largely of individuals from the city rather than her local community—delivered a verdict of "not guilty." However, the court took the highly irregular step of ordering the jurors to reconvene on August 27, suggesting an external pressure to revisit their findings. When the court returned on September 10, the charges from her first trial were combined with new witness statements, and the same assize delivered a second, contradictory verdict of "guilty." On September 11, Margaret was sentenced to death, and on September 18, 1661, she was executed by strangulation and burning, while the legal record noted the forfeiture of her entire estate.
