In the late summer of 1678, the legal apparatus of seventeenth-century Scotland turned its attention toward Elspeth Knox, a married woman residing in Humbie, Haddington. Her involvement in the judicial proceedings began in earnest on July 9, 1678, when she provided a formal confession to the authorities. The circumstances surrounding Elspeth’s case were deeply intertwined with the broader witch-hunting networks of the period; she was identified as an accomplice by Marion Veitch and was explicitly denounced by a significant number of other individuals under suspicion, including Sarah Cranston, Janet Burton, Jannet Hunter, Jennet Maitland, and an individual known only as the Henwife.
Despite her initial confession, the trajectory of Elspeth’s case took a definitive turn when she failed to appear for her scheduled trial in Edinburgh on September 13, 1678. The court’s response was swift and formal: in accordance with the legal practices of the era, Elspeth was officially declared a fugitive. Consequently, she was "put to the horn," a process of outlawry involving the symbolic blowing of a horn to publicly announce that she had been placed beyond the protection of the law for failing to submit to the jurisdiction of the court. Her disappearance from the trial proceedings concluded the recorded involvement of the state in her specific case.