In October 1577, the legal proceedings against Jonet Neyn Thomas McAllan were formally recorded in the shire of Ross. Identified in the court documents under the reference C/JO/3349, Jonet became the subject of a judicial inquiry that would culminate in a trial registered as T/JO/2142. At this time, the Scottish legal system was increasingly formalising its approach to allegations of malefice, and Jonet’s case represents a specific manifestation of the social and judicial pressures exerted on women within the Highland context during the late sixteenth century.
The surviving records for Jonet provide a skeletal framework of her involvement in the legal machinery of the period. While the specific nature of the charges brought against her remains documented only through these administrative identifiers, her case stands as part of the broader pattern of witchcraft accusations that characterised the decades following the Scottish Reformation. By examining the date of 25 October 1577, historians can place Jonet within a period when local courts were actively engaging with the prosecution of suspected supernatural transgressions, ensuring her place in the historical archive of early modern Ross.