In the spring of 1628, the burgh of Dumfries became the setting for the judicial proceedings against Agnes Charters. A widow residing within the town, Agnes found herself identified in the legal records of the era as a subject of investigation for the crime of witchcraft. Her case, documented under reference C/EGD/1008, formally entered the court system on the 6th of May, marking the commencement of a process that would require her to account for her actions before the local authorities.
Following this initial legal action, Agnes was brought to trial at Dumfries under the designation T/LA/482. As was customary in the early modern Scottish judicial system, the proceedings focused on the charges leveled against her during this period of intense scrutiny. The record of her trial serves as a stark historical marker of the legal mechanisms employed in Dumfries to address accusations of this nature, reflecting the socio-legal climate of the seventeenth century as it applied to Agnes and the community in which she lived.