Janet "Jenny" Geddes 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 revised version of the Book of Common Prayer, the 1637 Scottish Prayer Book. The act is reputed to have sparked the riot that led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the English Civil War.
Geddes plaque
St Giles' Cathedral, or the High Kirk of Edinburgh, is a parish church of the Church of Scotland in the Old Town of Edinburgh. The current building was begun in the 14th century and extended until the early 16th century; significant alterations were undertaken in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the addition of the Thistle Chapel. St Giles' is closely associated with many events and figures in Scottish history, including John Knox, who served as the church's minister after the Scottish Reformation.
West façade of the church building
Saint Giles depicted in a boss in the ceiling of the Thistle Chapel
St Giles' in 1647, showing the Tolbooth and Luckenbooths on the north of the church and Parliament House in the kirkyard to its south
David I holds a speculative model of the first St Giles' in a 20th-century window.
