In 1662, the wife of Thomas Hay, a resident of Winton in Haddington, found her life abruptly altered by the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials. Her accusation emerged as part of a significant wave of denunciations issued by an individual named James Welch. Although Welch was considered too young to face a formal trial himself, and was subsequently held in imprisonment, the authorities granted considerable weight to his testimonies. His detailed confessions and the names he provided became the catalyst for the legal proceedings brought against several members of the community, including the wife of Thomas.
The records for case C/EGD/563 and trial T/LA/1366 document the legal trajectory of this woman as she was drawn into the administrative apparatus of the period. Because the testimony of an accuser like Welch was treated with such gravity by the state, the wife of Thomas was compelled to answer for the allegations levelled against her under the prevailing statutes of the seventeenth century. Her case remains a clear illustration of how the accusations of a single individual—even one deemed too young for the bench—could ripple through the parish of Winton, leaving the accused to confront the serious, life-altering scrutiny of the Scottish courts.