In November 1649, Jonnet Hislop, a resident of Dalkeith in Edinburgh, provided a formal confession that would mark the beginning of her entanglement with the Scottish legal and ecclesiastical systems. While the specific nature of the admissions made during this initial confession remain documented only as a procedural entry, this record serves as the earliest surviving evidence of her involvement in the intense judicial scrutiny of the period.
Twelve years later, on August 3, 1661, Jonnet appeared once more in the records, this time noted within the proceedings of the local presbytery. She was identified alongside four other individuals as a confessed witch. Although subsequent trial papers exist, they contain no specific details regarding the court proceedings or the eventual outcome of her case. Consequently, Jonnet remains a figure defined by these sparse archival fragments—a series of administrative entries that capture her passage through the seventeenth-century Scottish witch trials.