On the 13th of July 1629, a man identified only as James was brought before the authorities in Duns, a market town in the Scottish Borders, to face proceedings concerning the charge of witchcraft. According to the extant legal records—catalogued under case file C/LA/3024—the judicial process against him moved swiftly from its initial investigation to the formal trial documented under reference T/LA/1286. While the specific nature of the accusations brought against James remain confined to the formal registers of the court, the trial itself stands as a representative fragment of the judicial scrutiny that characterized the period between 1563 and 1736.
The circumstances surrounding the case of James highlight the administrative reach of the seventeenth-century Scottish legal system in the Berwickshire region. As with many individuals caught within the machinery of the witch trials, the documentation of his encounter with the law provides a stark marker of his presence in the historical record. Despite the brevity of the surviving notes, the formal scheduling of a trial indicates that James was subject to the full weight of ecclesiastical and civil oversight, reflecting the profound socio-legal tensions regarding superstition and criminality that defined life in Duns during this era.