On June 25, 1622, the judicial machinery of early modern Scotland turned toward Kilpont, in the parish of Kirkliston, Linlithgow, to address the case of Barbara Home. Registered under the official record C/EGD/911, the proceedings against Barbara mark her as a subject of the intensive legal scrutiny that defined the era’s approach to suspected maleficium. Within the framework of the Scottish witchcraft acts, such a citation represented the opening of a formal investigation, transitioning the accused from the concerns of her local community into the jurisdiction of the state’s criminal apparatus.
Following the initial record of the case, Barbara was brought before the authorities for her trial, catalogued under reference T/LA/353. While the stark administrative entries provide only the briefest outline of her legal journey, they remain significant markers of the persistent preoccupation with witchcraft in seventeenth-century Linlithgow. The documentation of her process—from the initial case filing to the trial itself—reflects the systematic rigor with which the Scottish legal system processed those brought under suspicion during this period.