In the spring of 1662, the town of Haddington became the focus of a judicial inquiry that ensnared Barbara Conglitoun among a wider group of accused individuals. Her case emerged directly from the testimony of James Welch, a young boy whose own situation was unique; deemed too youthful to face a formal trial, he was held in imprisonment, yet his confessions and the subsequent denunciations he provided were regarded by the authorities as sufficiently credible to initiate legal action against others.
The records for Barbara, archived under reference C/EGD/481, reveal that she was identified as one of the many people implicated by Welch during this period of heightened scrutiny. While the judicial process concerning her was formally recorded under T/LA/1360, the documentation serves as a stark testament to the administrative machinery of the time. Barbara’s involvement illustrates the reach of the 1662 proceedings, where the utterances of an imprisoned child were integrated into the established legal frameworks of the Scottish witch trials.