In 1662, the town of Haddington became the site of a legal investigation involving Janet Symson. Her case emerged from a wider period of intense scrutiny, initiated by the denunciations of a youth named James Welch. While the authorities deemed Welch too young to undergo the formal rigours of a trial—resulting in his imprisonment—his testimony and detailed confessions were nonetheless treated with significant gravity by the legal officials of the time.
Janet was caught within this expansive net of accusations cast by Welch, leading to her inclusion in the judicial proceedings documented under case reference C/EGD/559. Following these initial denunciations, the matter moved toward a formal examination under trial T/LA/1371. The historical record preserves the bare outlines of this process, marking her position among the many individuals drawn into the ecclesiastical and civil investigations that characterised the mid-seventeenth-century pursuit of witchcraft in Scotland.