In the summer of 1661, Margaret Stevensoun, a widow residing in the village of Newtoun near Edinburgh, found herself drawn into the judicial machinery of the Scottish witch trials. Her involvement began to intensify as she was named by other women, Elizabeth Millar and Grissel Scot, during the course of their own legal proceedings. Following these accusations, Margaret was detained and brought to the Tolbooth, where she underwent multiple interrogations. Records indicate that she provided formal confessions on at least four occasions, with the initial testimonies documented on the 9th and 17th of July, 1661.
The charges brought against Margaret centered specifically on allegations of attending a witches' meeting. However, the legal process surrounding her case was not without complication. On the 25th of July, following her earlier admissions to the authorities, she formally retracted her confession. Despite this pivot in her testimony, the records preserved under case reference C/LA/2798 and trial reference T/LA/379 document the path of a woman caught within the complex and often overlapping accusations that defined the localized judicial climate of the mid-seventeenth century.