John Task

In the spring of 1662, the village of East Barns in Haddington became the site of a series of legal proceedings that would entangle John Task in the burgeoning witch hunts of the era. The case against John was rooted in the testimonies of a youth named James Welch, whose detailed denunciations had triggered a wide-reaching investigation. Although Welch was considered too young to face the rigors of a formal trial and was consequently committed to prison, the authorities treated his confessions and the subsequent accusations he leveled against his neighbors with significant gravity.

John was brought into the legal machinery under case reference C/EGD/556 on April 17, 1662, amidst a climate where the testimony of a single accuser could initiate a cascade of judicial scrutiny. As the legal process moved forward to his trial, recorded under reference T/LA/1373, the implications of being named by Welch became the defining feature of his experience within the Scottish justice system. Through the surviving records of his proceedings, John remains a documented participant in one of the many collective disturbances that characterized this turbulent period of early modern Scottish history.