In the winter of 1591, the legal machinery of late sixteenth-century Scotland focused its attention upon Bessie Robsoun, a resident of the burgh of Haddington. On January 27, Bessie was brought before the authorities to answer for charges pertaining to witchcraft. The administrative records from the Justiciary Court, indexed under case reference C/LA/2902, formalise her transition from a member of the Haddington community to a defendant within the judicial process, marking the beginning of the formal proceedings against her.
Following her initial appearance, the matter of Bessie moved into the trial phase, designated by the record T/LA/975. While the surviving documentation for this specific case is brief, it reflects the broader institutional scrutiny applied during this era, when local accusations were systematically processed through the Scottish legal system. Through these entries, the archival trace of Bessie remains preserved, documenting the specific date and procedural path of a woman caught within the complex socio-legal landscape of the post-Reformation witch trials.