In the autumn of 1643, the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials reached into the coastal burgh of Kinghorn in Fife, leading to the formal prosecution of Jonnet Smythe. Residing specifically in the area known as Easter Kinghorn, Jonnet became the subject of a judicial process recorded in the archives as case C/EGD/2295. On the 31st of October, this transition from private suspicion to public record solidified her position within the fraught ecclesiastical and civil landscape of mid-seventeenth-century Scotland.
The historical documentation regarding Jonnet remains focused on the administrative realities of her arrest and the subsequent legal proceedings. While contemporary research has noted the presence of this case within academic catalogues—such as those referenced by Christina Larner—the specific depositions and local testimonies that precipitated the action against her are defined by the stark, bureaucratic brevity of the period. For Jonnet, the final day of October marked the moment her life was irrevocably altered by the statutes of the time, placing her firmly among those individuals whose experiences were captured by the state during this era of intense judicial scrutiny.