In the summer of 1650, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials turned its attention to Agnes Litle, a woman whose lack of a settled parish rendered her a figure of immediate concern to the ecclesiastical authorities. According to the records of the Presbytery, Agnes was originally from the Stranraer presbytery, yet she had drifted into Wigtown without a permanent home or formal community standing. Her unsettled status, formally noted as that of a "vagabond," placed her under intense scrutiny during a period when the kirk sessions and presbyteries were increasingly preoccupied with the social and spiritual regulation of mobile populations.
The documentation of her case, identified in the judicial records as C/JO/3016, culminated in proceedings held on the 1st of July, 1650. As recorded in the subsequent trial files (T/JO/1282), Agnes was brought before the court to answer charges that would ultimately determine her fate within the rigid legal framework of the mid-seventeenth century. Her transition from the margins of Wigtown society to the center of a formal trial illustrates the intersection of local judicial authority and the broader anxiety surrounding those deemed "masterless" within the kingdom.