On 18 March 1624, William Falconner, a married man residing in the parish of Kinnel within the barony of Kinneil, Linlithgow, found himself at the center of a legal proceeding regarding allegations of witchcraft. Recorded under case file C/EGD/952, the proceedings initiated against William reflect the broader administrative mechanisms of the early modern Scottish judicial system, which formalised the pursuit of those suspected of diabolical pacts or maleficium.
Following the initial entry of the case, the judicial process advanced to a formal trial, documented under reference T/LA/427. As a resident of Kinneil—a region historically impacted by the intense local scrutiny of the early seventeenth-century witch hunts—William was subjected to the rigorous legal interrogations that defined the period. These records serve as a testament to the gravity with which the authorities in Linlithgow addressed such accusations, marking the procedural path from his initial naming in the records to the subsequent adjudication of his trial.