In the summer of 1650, the wife of a man named Whyte found herself drawn into the judicial machinery of seventeenth-century Scotland. Residing in the coastal burgh of North Berwick, in the county of Haddington, she was apprehended and brought before the authorities amidst the heightened anxieties of the era. On July 4, 1650, the legal record formally opened a case against her, documenting her status not as a solitary figure, but as an individual intertwined with the experiences of her spouse.
The historical documentation regarding Whyte is brief, reflecting the scarcity of details that often characterize such local proceedings from this period. Official records indicate that she was held in confinement alongside her husband, with both individuals effectively removed from their domestic life and placed under state custody. While the surviving entries in the judicial registers—specifically cases C/JO/2744 and T/JO/192—provide the structural timeline of her detention and trial, the precise nature of the accusations brought against her remains obscured by the limitations of the extant archive.