Jenny Geddes

Scottish vegetable-seller, traditionally reputed to have started the riots in St Giles' church, Edinburgh, by throwing her wooden stool at the preacher, Bishop Lindsay, when Laud's prayer book was introduced on Sunday, 23 July 1637. Her story appears in full detail in Phillips's continuation of Baker's Chronicle (1660).

The legendary Jenny Geddes famously threw her stool at the head of the minister in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, beginning the riot that led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the English Civil War.

Since the early years of the seventeenth century, the Scottish Church had been established on the same Episcopalian basis as its English cousin, but was far more puritan, both in doctrine and practice. 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 AND Administration Of The Sacraments: And other parts of divine Service for the use of the CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

The first use of the prayer book was in St Giles' on Sunday 23 July 1637, when John Hanna, Dean of Edinburgh, began to read the Collects, part of the prescribed service, and Jenny Geddes, a market-woman or street-seller, threw her stool straight at the reverend's head. Some sources describe it as a "fald stool" or a "creepie-stool" meaning a folding stool as shown flying in the illustration, while others claim that it was a three-legged cuttie-stool.

This was the start of a general tumult with much of the congregation shouting abuse and throwing Bibles, stools, sticks and stones. Prebble reports the phrase "Dost thou say Mass in my lug?" as being addressed to a gentleman in the congregation who murmured a dutiful response to the liturgy, getting thumped with a Bible for his pains, and describes Jenny as one of a number of "waiting-women" who were paid to arrive early and sit on their folding stools to hold a place for their patrons.

More serious rioting in the streets (and in other cities) followed, and the Provost and magistrates were besieged in the City Chambers, to the extent that it became necessary to negotiate with the Edinburgh mob.

In the aftermath of the riots definitive evidence is hard to come by, and some doubt if Jenny Geddes started the fight or if she even existed, but she remains a part of Edinburgh tradition and has long had a memorial in St Giles.

Around 1787, Robert Burns named his mare after Jenny Geddes and wrote amusingly of this faithful horse.