Presbyterian Riot in St Giles

Janet “Jenny” Geddes (c. 1600 – c. 1660) was a Scottish market-trader in Edinburgh who is alleged to have thrown a stool at the head of the minister in St Giles’ Cathedral in objection to the first public use of the Church of Scotland’s 1637 edition of the Book of Common Prayer in Scotland.

The act is reputed to have sparked the riot that led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the English Civil War.

Since the early years of the 17th century, the Church of Scotland had been established as an episcopal church on the same basis as the Church of England, but was far more Puritan both in doctrine and practice.

In 1633, King Charles I came to St Giles’ to have his Scottish coronation service, using the full Anglican rites, accompanied by William Laud his new Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the years that followed he began to consider ways of introducing Anglican-style church services in Scotland.

The king arranged a commission to draw up a prayer book suitable for Scotland, and in 1637 an Edinburgh printer produced: “The BOOKE OF Common Prayer:

Sunday, 23 July 1637

He first use of the prayer book was in St Giles’ on Sunday, 23 July 1637, when James Hannay, Dean of Edinburgh, began to read the Collects, part of the prescribed service, and Geddes, a market-woman or street-seller, threw her stool straight at the minister’s head. Some sources describe it as a “fald stool” or a “creepie-stool” meaning a folding stool as shown flying towards the dean in the illustration, while others claim that it was a larger, three-legged cuttie-stool. As she hurled the stool she is reported to have yelled: “De’il gie you colic, the wame o’ ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?” meaning “Devil cause you colic in your stomach, false thief: dare you say the Mass in my ear?”