In 1655, the legal records of Perth formalised the pursuit of Patrick Barnett, a resident of the settlement of Balbugie. His inclusion in the judicial registers marked him as a subject of the circuit court, though the specific nature of the allegations brought against him remain obscured by the passage of time. Like many others caught within the mechanisms of the Scottish judicial system during this era, Patrick was documented not through the transcriptions of a lengthy trial, but through his status as a fugitive.
The surviving documentation, specifically the records of the Justiciary Court (JC17/1), categorizes Patrick among those who had fled the reach of the law to avoid trial. Because he did not appear before the court to face the charges leveled against him, his case remains an entry of incomplete resolution. Consequently, while the historical record confirms Patrick’s identification as an accused individual within the witch trials of the mid-seventeenth century, the ultimate outcome of his life and the specific evidence brought against him remain unrecorded in the archival corpus.