In February 1650, the judicial records of Scotland documented the case of Marion Moffat, a woman residing in the parish of Crawford, also identified in contemporary administrative registers as Craufurddouglas, located in the county of Lanark. The legal proceedings initiated against her, cataloged under case reference C/JO/2933 and trial reference T/JO/1123, mark her as a subject of the rigorous scrutiny applied to alleged practitioners of witchcraft during this period of intense judicial activity.
The breadth of the inquiry into Marion’s conduct extended beyond her own immediate trial, as evidenced by her name appearing within the testimonies of other ongoing legal proceedings. Notably, she was mentioned during the trial of Jonet Coutts, suggesting that the judicial authorities viewed these women within a web of interconnected allegations. While the surviving documentation provides only these formal fragments of the process initiated against Marion on February 28, 1650, they serve as a historical testament to the systematic investigations that defined the era’s approach to spiritual and social transgressions in rural Lanarkshire.