In March 1650, the legal apparatus of the Scottish state focused its attention on Helen Samuel, a resident of the parish of Kirkliston in Linlithgow. Her involvement in the judicial process was catalyzed by testimony provided during the trial of Jonet Miller, another local woman whose own legal proceedings implicated Helen as a witch. Following this accusation, Helen was brought before the authorities to answer for these charges, and her case was formally processed under the reference C/JO/2834.
The subsequent judicial records confirm that Helen underwent a rigorous interrogation, culminating in a confession recorded on the 13th of March 1650. This acknowledgment of guilt—or what was formally documented as such—led to her appearance in at least two distinct trial sessions, noted in the archive as T/JO/410 and T/JO/532. These brief, clinical entries represent the entirety of the archival trace left behind by Helen, marking her journey through the rigorous ecclesiastical and civil frameworks that characterized the witch hunts of mid-seventeenth-century Scotland.