In the spring of 1662, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials reached the parish of Auldearn in Nairn, drawing Bessie Wilson into the formal process of investigation. Recorded under case file C/EGD/437, Bessie became a subject of judicial scrutiny on the 14th of April, a period during which local anxieties often converged into official inquiries. The archival records establish her residence in Auldearn, a community that would become inextricably linked with the fervent pursuit of witchcraft throughout the mid-seventeenth century.
Following this initial entry in the registers, the proceedings against her advanced to the formal stage of litigation. The subsequent trial, documented under reference T/LA/1826, serves as the final historical trace of Bessie’s experience within the court system. These records, while sparse in their surviving details, document the transition of a local resident from private life to the center of a judicial process that defined the intersection of law, theology, and social order in early modern Scotland.