In the spring of 1608, legal proceedings were initiated against Meg Lyell, a resident of Spital in the parish of Crailing, Roxburgh. On April 20, the presbytery recorded her name in connection with a case of witchcraft, marking the beginning of a formal investigation into her activities. Her life was rooted in the small communities of the Scottish Borders, associated specifically with one of the two hospitals located within the parish—either Spital Rule or Crailing Spital—though the surviving records do not definitively distinguish between them.
The trajectory of the case suggests a protracted involvement with the judicial authorities of the region. Following the initial record of the case in April, Meg appears in trial records indexed under T/JO/785. There is strong historical indication that she may be the same individual identified as Marjorie Lyell, who faced further proceedings regarding witchcraft in the nearby burgh of Jedburgh five years later, in 1613. These documents offer a glimpse into the reach of the Scottish witch trials, illustrating how an individual from a rural hospital setting could be drawn into the intensive legal scrutiny of the seventeenth-century presbytery and burgh courts.