In 1590, the records of Stirling bear witness to the legal proceedings initiated against a single woman named Janet Pook. The administrative documentation of the time highlights her marital status, noting that because she stated she had no husband, the clerk recorded her as single. Beyond this brief biographical detail, the surviving manuscripts from the period, specifically those catalogued as case C/EGD/61, mark the formal beginning of the investigations brought against her.
The trajectory of the proceedings remains partially obscured by the state of the primary source material. Subsequent trial notes, referenced under T/LA/1646, indicate that investigations into Janet continued, though the legibility of the period’s manuscript evidence is noted by archivists to be exceptionally poor. Despite the challenging nature of the handwriting and the fragmented nature of the documentation—further recorded under T/LA/2236—these surviving entries serve as the historical footprint of her encounter with the judicial authorities of early modern Scotland.