In the spring of 1624, legal proceedings were initiated against Marioun Boyd, a married woman residing in the parish of Spott in Haddington. The records of the High Court of Justiciary (C/EGD/962) formally document her case, which came before the authorities on the 28th of April. While the archival documentation of this period often focuses on the procedural machinery of the kirk sessions and the central courts, the entry for Marioun situates her within the broader wave of judicial scrutiny that characterized seventeenth-century East Lothian.
Following the initial charges brought against her in late April, Marioun was subjected to the formal processes of the Scottish criminal justice system. The subsequent trial records (T/LA/432) outline the movement of her case through the judiciary, marking her as one of the many individuals caught in the intersection of local community discord and the rigorous legal standards of the era. Her experience remains a documented fragment of the period’s extensive witch-hunting activity, reflecting the administrative thoroughness with which these accusations were pursued within the jurisdiction of Haddington.