Robertson's thesis says Young cultivated a reputation for witchcraft for over forty years, and that the reputation had probably protected her for much of that time because few people around East Barns and Dunbar would have crossed her. In April 1624 Janet Acheson, Margaret Melrose and Margaret Baxter, and Marion Bathgate, accused her. The Privy Council ordered her tried in 1629.
The indictment had four strands: destroying enemies financially, causing disease, transferring illness from one person to another, and consulting with other witches and the Devil. Sixteen of the twenty-four counts concerned harm to neighbours. Only three mentioned healing, and one described a ritual for curing cattle. Her association with women who had already been executed at Dunbar and Haddington, including Christian Grinton, Katharine Gray and Janet Lindsay, made her conviction close to certain.
The thesis notes that Lauren Martin was preparing a fuller study of the case at the time. The pin is approximate.
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