In the summer of 1644, the legal machinery of the Scottish kirk turned its attention toward the parish of Haddington, initiating the case against John Neill. On July 11, the Presbytery issued a formal request for ministers to solicit accusations from within their respective congregations, a procedural step that functioned to gather testimony against those suspected of maleficium or diabolical pacts. As a resident of Haddington, John became a figure of administrative scrutiny under this wider ecclesiastical mandate to purge the community of perceived supernatural threats.
The surviving documentation, specifically the trial records indexed under T/JO/2202 and T/LA/1202, marks the progression of the legal proceedings following the Presbytery's initial directive. These records attest to the transition of the matter from a parish-level inquiry into the formal court system. While the specific nature of the allegations brought against John remains captured within these archival classifications, the archival trail confirms his involvement in the intensive judicial processes that characterized the Scottish witch trials during the mid-seventeenth century.