In the early months of 1591, the legal machinery of Haddington turned toward Meg Stillcart, whose life would become permanently tethered to the judicial registers of the period. On the 27th of January, Meg was formally entered into the records under case reference C/LA/2905. At a time when the Scottish crown and local kirk sessions were increasingly preoccupied with the perceived manifestations of maleficium, Meg found herself caught within the gravity of a system designed to investigate and prosecute those suspected of involvement in witchcraft.
The procedural path for Meg continued under trial reference T/LA/979. While the brevity of the surviving documentation obscures the specific testimonies or particular grievances brought against her by her neighbors in Haddington, the existence of these records confirms that she was subjected to the full weight of the Scottish legal apparatus. As a resident of the burgh, Meg navigated a judicial process that treated the accusation of witchcraft as a matter of grave public and spiritual concern, marking her place in the historical landscape of early modern Scottish criminal proceedings.