JENNY GEDDES AND HER STOOL

 JENNY GEDDES AND HER STOOL. AN order was given by the King to introduce a new Service Book into the churches of Scotland, and this was to be done on the 23rd of July, 1637. On that day a great concourse of people, including the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of St. Andrews, along with several members of the Privy Council, the Judges of the Supreme Court, the Magistrates of the City, and a great multitude of the citizens, assembled in the church of St. Giles, then called the “Great Church,” to witness the ceremony. In the morning the usual prayers had been read from the old Book of Common Order. The Dean of Edinburgh, in his surplice, was to read the new service, and the Bishop of Edinburgh was to preach. As soon as the Dean took his place in the reading-desk, and opened the obnoxious volume, a murmur arose in the congregation, and on his proceeding to announce the collect for the day, an old woman, named Janet Geddes, who kept a greengrocer’s stall in the High Street, is said to have exclaimed,—“Deil colick the wame o’ thee, thou fause thief! Dost thou say mass at my lug [ear]?” and to have flung at the Dean’s head the stool on which she had been sitting. A scene of uproar and confusion immediately ensued. A crowd, consisting principally of women, rushed to the desk with loud menaces, and the Dean, in great alarm, threw off his surplice and fled. The Bishop of Edinburgh then ascended the pulpit and attempted to restore order, but without effect. A volley of sticks and other missiles was hurled at him, accompanied with cries of “A pope! a pope! Stone him! stone him!” so that he could not be heard. “The gentleman,” says a contemporary writer, “did fall a-tearing [weeping], and crying that the mass was entered amongst them, and Baal in the church. There was a gentleman who was standing behind a pew and answering ‘amen’ to what the Dean was reading. A she-zealot, hearing him, starts up in choler. ‘Traitor,’ says she, ‘does thou say mass at my ear?’ and with that struck him in the face with her bible in great indignation and fury.” The rioters were at length expelled from the church, and the doors having been bolted, the Dean emerged from his hiding-place, and resumed the service. It was rendered almost inaudible, however, by the shouts of the mob without, who battered at the door, and shouted, “A pope! a pope! Antichrist! Pull him down!” and other exclamations of the same sort. At the close of the service, the Dean made his escape unnoticed; but the Bishop of Edinburgh, who was very unpopular, was threatened and assailed by the populace, and was with difficulty rescued from their hands.Religious Anecdotes of Scotland

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