In the spring of 1627, the presbytery records of Ellon in Aberdeenshire identified Margaret King as a vagabond, a designation that placed her on the precarious margins of seventeenth-century Scottish society. Living in a state of extreme poverty, Margaret occupied a precarious social position, lacking the stability of a settled household or a trade that might have provided her with some measure of protection or community standing. Her movements through the region, characteristic of those the authorities categorized as "vagabonds," brought her under the scrutiny of local church officials, who were tasked with monitoring the moral and spiritual order of the parish.
On April 11, 1627, this scrutiny culminated in formal legal proceedings recorded under case file C/JO/3007. Margaret was subsequently brought to trial under T/JO/1260 to answer for allegations of witchcraft. The records provide no further details regarding the specific testimonies or the final verdict rendered by the court. Her experience serves as a stark illustration of how the intersection of poverty, displacement, and the climate of early modern religious discipline frequently directed the mechanisms of the Scottish judicial system toward those who lived outside the traditional structures of the parish.