On the 8th of August 1649, Richard Umpherstone, a resident of Aberlady in Haddington, became the subject of formal legal scrutiny regarding the crime of witchcraft. His name appears within the administrative documentation of the period—specifically a request for a commission—alongside five other individuals who were facing similar allegations at the same time. This collective pursuit suggests a period of heightened judicial activity within the region, characteristic of the mid-seventeenth-century waves of prosecution that sought to address concerns of maleficium through the established mechanisms of the Scottish courts.
Following this request for commission, the judicial process moved with relative swiftness for Richard. By that same date, the 8th of August, a confession had been formally recorded in his name. While the extant documentation does not provide the specific content of his testimony or the nature of the activities to which he admitted, the registration of a confession served as a pivotal moment in the trial proceedings of the era. The record concludes there, marking Richard’s place in the broader history of the 1563–1736 witch trials, a period defined by the convergence of local suspicion and the rigorous, legalistic pursuit of those accused of supernatural transgressions.