In the spring of 1613, the judicial authorities in Roxburgh turned their attention to Manie Ellote, a widowed woman whose life was brought under the scrutiny of the Scottish legal system. On the 8th of April, legal proceedings were formally initiated against her under the reference C/EGD/867. As a widow, Manie occupied a vulnerable position within the social framework of the early seventeenth century, a period during which the prosecution of witchcraft in Scotland was governed by the Witchcraft Act of 1563, which criminalized the practice of sorcery and the consulting of witches.
The administrative trail of Manie’s case concludes with the record of her trial, cataloged under T/JO/784. While the brief historical documentation survives only as a record of these procedural steps, it situates Manie within the broader, systematic efforts of the kirk sessions and secular courts to address accusations of occult activity in the Scottish Borders. These surviving entries serve as the final official markers of her encounter with the judicial machinery of the era, reflecting the stark bureaucratic reality faced by those brought before the bar on such charges.