In the winter of 1649, the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials reached into the town of Kelso in Roxburgh to process the case of Issabell Symme. On 16 December, her name was entered into the records of the Justiciary Court under case number C/JO/3145, marking the formal commencement of proceedings against her. While the archival fragments are sparse, they position Issabell within a period of heightened intensity regarding witchcraft prosecutions, as the legal apparatus of the mid-seventeenth century sought to address allegations brought before the local and central authorities.
Following this initial registration, the formal movement of her case proceeded to the trial stage, recorded as T/JO/1647. For Issabell, this transition from a named suspect to a subject of trial highlights the gravity of the legal scrutiny she faced under the statutes of the time. The documentation serves as a stark testament to the administrative rigour applied to her case, tracing the path from her residence in Kelso through the procedural requirements of a seventeenth-century Scottish court.