In April 1662, Jonet Wast, a married woman residing in the village of Sammuelston in Haddington, found herself drawn into the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials. Her accusation was not an isolated incident but part of a wider crisis that engulfed her household, as the records indicate that her entire family was accused of witchcraft. This collective denunciation was precipitated by the testimony of James Welch, whose accounts were treated with formal seriousness by the authorities of the time, despite Welch himself being deemed too young to undergo a public trial and remaining in custody as a result.
The legal proceedings against Jonet were logged under case reference C/EGD/517, marking her entry into a judicial process that would eventually involve at least two distinct trial records, T/JO/1045 and T/JO/1830. While these records do not detail the specific activities attributed to Jonet, her case remains historically significant as a documented example of the contagion of suspicion that characterized this period, where the accusations of a single individual—even one considered a minor by the court—could ripple outward to encompass entire families within a community.