Jonet Grant, a married woman residing in Colquhatstane in the parish of Cromar, Aberdeen, found herself drawn into the turbulent judicial climate of late sixteenth-century Scotland. In the summer of 1590, her name surfaced within the legal processes tied to the cases of Achinleck and Leslie, involving the same officials and judicial figures presiding over their trials. Records indicate that Jonet’s history with the authorities predated these proceedings, as she had previously faced charges of adultery, a secular transgression that placed her under the scrutiny of the local and ecclesiastical courts of the period.
By mid-1590, the focus of these proceedings shifted toward the capital. On July 22, 1590, Jonet was indexed in the High Court, and subsequently appeared in Edinburgh for her trial on August 17. During the course of the legal process, Jonet provided a confession, the details of which were formally recorded. Following her trial, the court delivered a verdict of guilty. Consequently, Jonet was sentenced to death; she was taken to Castle Hill in Edinburgh, where she was executed by the standard method of strangulation followed by burning.