Janet "Jenny" Geddes (c. 1600 – c. 1660) 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 1637 edition of the Book of Common Prayer in Scotland. The act is reputed to have sparked the riot that led to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the English Civil War. Background Since the early years of the 17th century, the Church of Scotland had been established as an episcopal church on the same basis as the Church of England, but was far more Puritan both in doctrine and practice. In 1633, King Charles I came to St Giles' to have his Scottish coronation service, using the full Anglican rites, accompanied by William Laud his new Archbishop of Canterbury. In the years that followed he began to consider ways of introducing Anglican-style church services in Scotland. The king arranged a commission to draw up a prayer book suitable for Scotland, and in 1637 an Edinburgh printer produced: These developments met with widespread opposition. Incident The first use of the prayer book was in St Giles' on Sunday, 23 July 1637, when James Hannay, Dean of Edinburgh, began to read the Collects, part of the prescribed service, and Geddes, a market-woman or street-seller, threw her stool straight at the minister's head. Some sources describe it as a "fald stool" or a "creepie-stool" meaning a folding stool as shown flying towards the dean in the illustration, while others claim that it was a larger, three-legged cuttie-stool. As she hurled the stool she is reported to have yelled: "" meaning "Devil cause you colic in your stomach, 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. John Prebble reports the phrase "Daur ye 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. Officers summoned by the Provost ejected the rioters, who, for the