The legendary Jenny Geddes famously threw her stool at the head of the minister in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, beginning a riot which led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms that included the English Civil War.
While the Reformation in England led to the King being head of the Church of England, appointing Bishops and prescribing the service including the use of prayer books, in Scotland the Presbyterian Church of Scotland became established, opposing both bishops and prayer books. In 1633 King Charles I of England came to St Giles to have his Scottish coronation service with full Anglican rites, accompanied by William Laud, his new arch-bishop of Canterbury, and then began to impose Anglican-style church services on Scotland. They 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.
These developments met with widespread opposition.
The first use of the prayer book was in St Giles on Sunday July 23 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 folding stool straight at the reverend head, reportedly with the words:
- "Deil colic the wame o’ ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?" meaning "Devil cause you severe pain and flatulent distention of your abdomen, false thief: dare you say the Mass in my ear?".
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. The rioters were ejected by officers summoned by the Provost, but for the rest of the service hammered at the doors and threw stones at the windows.
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. At the suggestion of the Lord Advocate it appointed a committee known as the Tables to negotiate with the Privy Council. Characteristically, Charles turned down the Tables' demands for withdrawal of the Anglican liturgy and more riots ensued with talk of civil war. This led to massive defiant signing of the National Covenant in February 1638, Scottish rejection of the imposition of Bishops and covenanters seizing the city of Aberdeen. Charles reacted by starting the Bishops' Wars, the start of the Wars of Three Kingdoms.
In the aftermath of the riots definitive evidence is hard to come by, and some doubt if Jenny Geddes started the tumult or if she even existed, but she remains a part of Edinburgh tradition and has long had a memorial in St Giles, though the recent addition of a sculptural three-legged stool does not match the old descriptions of a folding stool.
Around 1787, Robert Burns named his mare after Jenny Geddes and wrote amusingly of this faithful horse.
See also
External links
References
- The Lion in the North, John Prebble, Penguin Books 1973
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Scotland, A Concise History, Fitzroy Maclean, Thames and Hudson 1991, ISBN 0-500-27706-0
