Geddes, JENNY

Geddes, JENNY, an obscure woman whose name is memorable in tradition from her having begun the riotous resistance to the introduction of a Service-book prepared by Laud into the Church of Scotland in 1637. The day fixed for this hated innovation was Sunday the 23d July, and an immense crowd filled the High Kirk of St Giles, Edinburgh, on the occasion. On Dean Hanna's beginning to read the collect for the day, Jenny Geddes, who kept a vegetable-stall in the High Street, threw her stool at his head, shouting: 'Deil colic the wame o' thee; out, thou false thief! dost thou say mass at my lug?' A great uproar at once arose, and both dean and bishop (David Lindsay) had to flee for their lives from the fury of the mob. This tumult proved the deathblow of the liturgy in Scotland. This famous exploit is unfortunately lacking in historical evidence beyond a fairly early and persistent tradition. Still Sydserf in 1661 mentions 'the immortal Jenet Geddes, princess of the Trone adventurers,' as having burned 'her leather chair of state'—evidently an object already famous—at the Restoration bonfires, and the story appears with name and full detail in Phillips' Continuation of Baker's Chronickle, published in 1660, the heroine being stated as 'yet living at the time of this relation.' An idle attempt has been made to set up a rival claimant in one Barbara Hamilton or Mein, but Jenny Geddes still keeps her place among the worthies of Scottish history. The erudulous may even see her stool in the Antiquaries' Museum at Edinburgh. See Dr Lees's St Giles', Edinburgh (1889).