In the spring of 1616, the legal machinery of the Scottish kirk and state turned its attention toward the life of Bessie Stewinstone, a married woman residing in Hammilton Wood, located in the parish of Hamilton, Lanarkshire. On the 19th of March, her name was formally entered into the judicial register under case number C/EGD/881. This initial administrative action served as the prelude to a formal process of inquiry, marking the beginning of a period of intense scrutiny for Bessie within her local community.
The subsequent legal proceedings were formalized under trial record T/LA/236. As the matter moved through the judicial system of early seventeenth-century Scotland, the records document the transition of Bessie from a private resident of Hamilton to the subject of a state-sanctioned trial. While the surviving documentation remains sparse regarding the specific nature of the allegations brought against her, the presence of these distinct case and trial files confirms that she was subjected to the rigorous protocols of the Scottish witch trials, a system defined by the intersection of ecclesiastical discipline and criminal law during the reign of James VI and I.