In the harsh judicial climate of late 17th-century Scotland, John Hislop, a weaver from Crichton near Edinburgh, found himself entangled in the fraught accusations of witchcraft that swept across the nation with tension and fear. As part of a group, likely including his sisters given the shared surname, John faced serious charges common to the era: witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, and the renunciation of divine faith, all amounting to an alleged pact with the Devil. Such charges were particularly feared as they supposedly meant that the accused had delivered both body and soul into the clutches of nefarious forces.
Public records, notably the Edinburgh Porteous Roll dated August 9, 1679, indicate how grave these accusations were regarded. Yet, by the summer of 1683, John and his group remained listed in successive rolls with the critical notation: ‘all absent and resited.’ This suggests that when summoned for trial, John and his co-accused were not present to answer these charges, a turn of events that might imply evasion or some form of absence that begged explanation. This absence didn’t erase their names from the ominous rolls but rather maintained their status as individuals of interest, yet unjudged in this dark chapter of Scottish justice.
The intricacies of John's case, like many others in the period, reflect the broader societal currents of suspicion and the fraught practices in the judicial handling of alleged witchcraft. The exact circumstances of John's life post-1683 aren’t illuminated in surviving documents, but the persistence of his name in legal records underscores the lasting impact of such accusations in an era where the fear of malevolent supernatural influence ran deep within the community fabric.