In the spring of 1624, the legal machinery of early modern Scotland turned its attention toward Jeane Lylburne, a resident of the port town of Barrowstouness, or Bo'ness, in the county of Linlithgow. On March 18, 1624, Jeane was formally processed under case file C/EGD/956. This entry marked the beginning of a judicial trajectory that would see her moved from the local concerns of her parish to the formal scrutiny of the higher courts, as evidenced by the subsequent record of her trial, T/LA/423.
The documentation surrounding Jeane offers a stark window into the procedural realities of the Scottish witch trials. As the legal process unfolded, she was subjected to the strictures of the era's criminal justice system, which moved from the initial registration of her case to the formal proceedings of a trial. Throughout this transition, Jeane remained the focus of the authorities in Linlithgow, a region noted for its active pursuit of such cases during the seventeenth century. The surviving records of these proceedings serve as a somber testament to the specific intersection of local residence and judicial intervention that defined the lived experience of those accused during this period.