In the spring of 1662, the wife of Thomas Baylie, a resident of Haddington, found herself ensnared in a widespread judicial investigation that gripped the region. Her case was inextricably linked to the testimony of James Welch, a young boy whose numerous denunciations prompted a flurry of legal activity. While Welch himself was deemed too young to stand trial and was subsequently committed to prison, the authorities formally recorded his accusations, treating his confessions and his naming of specific individuals with considerable institutional gravity.
As a consequence of these proceedings, Baylie was caught within the legal apparatus established to process those implicated by the boy’s statements. Documentation under the reference C/EGD/538 and the subsequent trial record T/LA/1388 confirm her inclusion among the individuals denounced during this period of heightened scrutiny. Though the historical record preserves her identity through her husband’s name and her residency in Haddington, the archival trail leaves the specific outcome of her trial to the silence of the seventeenth-century judicial files.