The case of John McMillan, a resident of Edinburgh, emerges from the legal landscape of 1661, a period characterized by a notable intensification in the pursuit of those suspected of witchcraft. Although the surviving records from the Newbattle Kirk Session indicate that he was not a local of that parish, his movements brought him within the administrative reach of those authorities. On August 14, 1661, the legal proceedings against John commenced, marking the beginning of a process that would involve multiple judicial reviews.
The judicial trail left by John includes entries in the records for two separate trials, indexed under T/JO/1668 and T/LA/300. Central to these proceedings was a confession, which was formally documented in 1661. In the context of seventeenth-century Scottish jurisprudence, such a confession served as a pivotal component of the legal narrative, often acting as the primary evidence upon which the court relied as the case moved through the complex, overlapping jurisdictions of the era.