In December 1649, the judicial machinery of Edinburgh turned its attention to Helen Pennant, an individual whose origins remain obscured by the passage of time, though city records firmly place her within the capital during this period. The documentation surviving in the case files (C/LA/3346) offers little context regarding the specific allegations leveled against her; however, the legal proceedings moved with a swift and somber momentum characteristic of the intense witch-hunting climate that gripped Scotland in the mid-seventeenth century.
Following the legal processes recorded in T/LA/2138, the court reached a verdict of guilty. The sentence imposed upon Helen was the most severe permitted under the statutes of the time. Before the end of that same month in 1649, she was put to death by burning, a grim conclusion that reflects the finality of the judicial actions taken against her in the closing weeks of that year.