In the spring of 1613, Agnes Smyth, a widow residing in the settlement of Scaitraw within the county of Haddington, became the subject of formal legal scrutiny regarding allegations of witchcraft. The records indicate that her case, cataloged under reference C/EGD/856, was initiated on the 7th of April. As a widowed woman, Agnes occupied a precarious position within the social structure of seventeenth-century Scotland, where such independent status often rendered individuals more vulnerable to the anxieties and suspicions of their local communities during periods of religious and social tension.
Following the initiation of the case, the judicial process moved forward to a formal trial, recorded under the reference T/LA/216. While the extant documentation provides the skeletal framework of the legal proceedings against her, it confirms that Agnes was processed through the established mechanisms of the Scottish courts during this era. Her experience remains a documented instance of the broader pattern of witch trials that characterized the decades between 1563 and 1736, reflecting the administrative intersections of local law and ecclesiastical concern in early modern Haddingtonshire.