The Cutty Stool in St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh
Revolutions can be triggered by the smallest moment – or, sometimes, by the story about them. It was one of those small moments that Scottish artist Merilyn Smith had in mind when sculpting the Cutty Stool, which now stands near the entrance to St Giles' cathedral (AKA the High Kirk) in Edinburgh.
This 50cm-high bronze sculpture was given in memory of local woman Jenny Geddes, who is said to have launched a protest with far-reaching consequences.
But why this stool, and how did it (or its story) trigger a revolution across the British Isles?
Jenny Geddes and her protest
In Scotland's sixteenth-century Reformation, the Scottish church (or kirk) had rejected Catholicism in a grassroots movement, and adopted Presbyterianism instead. One important feature of Presbyterianism is that it has no bishops (and therefore no cathedrals), which were still important in the English system.
The man in the pulpit on 23 July 1637 was the dean of St Giles'. That's a job that only existed because king Charles I had made St Giles' into a cathedral in 1633. So there's one thing that would rile up the local Presbyterians, maybe including Jenny Geddes. But there was more.
That day in July marked the first time the church service was taken not from the Presbyterian Book of Common Order, but from the new Scots Book of Common Prayer, based on the English prayer book. Worse, it was largely written by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was imposing its use beyond England.
Archbishop William Laud was blamed on both sides of the border for the highly ceremonial style of worship emerging in England, which contrasted the Presbyterian preference for simplicity, and for plain worship spaces. It struck many Scots as a step back towards Catholicism, and it was being forced on them by, of all people, the English.
So whether or not Jenny Geddes really threw her stool at the dean - shouting 'Don't say Mass in my ear!' - that sentiment would have been understood by Presbyterians across Scotland (and England, too). A riot – the St Giles' Broyle – broke out, and a series of violent protests followed across Scotland. We can't be sure this story of the riot's origin is true, but it's stuck because it reflects a deeper truth.
Why did Scotland get a new prayer book?
Seventeenth-century Scotland and England shared a monarch, but were separate kingdoms with separate churches. When he inherited the English throne in 1603, James VI of Scotland attempted to bring the two realms closer together, and one part of that project was bringing the churches into what he called uniformity.
This raised Scottish fears that they'd be absorbed by their larger, wealthier neighbour; after all, James and his successor, Charles, ruled from London, surrounded by obedient bishops, far from Presbyterian clergy who were used to criticising kings to their faces. For many Scots, uniformity with England will have sounded a lot like having to obey the English model.
Where Charles I went beyond James
His Scottish coronation in 1633 – eight years after becoming king – was Charles's first visit to Scotland. In a short trip, he managed to annoy Presbyterians by having a Laudian-style coronation, remodelling Holyrood's chapel along Laudian lines, and making St Giles' into a cathedral. Plus, he alienated the nobility by adding bishops to his Scottish privy council.
In this Charles demonstrated a characteristic lack of tact, described by some historians as blindness. Most accounts of this period find fault with Charles' personality, especially when compared to his politically astute father. What Charles inherited was a belief in the divine right of kings – the idea that he was God's vice-regent, so the church should be subject to him (not the other way around, as in Presbyterianism) – and a stubborn streak that led him to double down when he could have been flexible.
Where James had been willing to overlook his objections to the Scots' Book of Common Order, Charles insisted on replacing it, bypassing parliament and the kirk to do so. The replacement was therefore seen as an English imposition and royal overreach, along with Charles's new rules re-arranging Scottish churches to match English layouts. In response to the petitions and riots of 1637, Charles ordered that rioters be arrested and the new book used again.
This didn't help. Civic disorder was the common people's response; Scotland's elites had a more formal one. In February 1638, leading noblemen, gentry, burghers and clergy met at Greyfriars Kirk and drew up the National Covenant. This document, which quickly racked up thousands of signatures, claimed Charles had violated the contract between ruler and ruled (an idea that would feed into his trial in 1649) when he ignored parliament. The Covenant bound its signatories to uphold 'true religion' in Scotland (ie. Presbyterianism), uphold the king's laws, and denounce recent changes to the kirk. When support for the Covenant spread across the Lowlands, it got tied up with national identity, and a defence of Scottish religion against the English.
The Bishops' Wars
Things in Scotland didn't improve for Charles. The kirk's General Assembly abolished his bishops and his Prayer Book. Doubling down, Charles raised an army and marched north, intending to crush this defiance. Unfortunately for him, the English recruits were poorly-trained, while the Covenanters' army included Scottish veterans of the Thirty Years' War.
Neither side was keen to actually fight, and the first so-called Bishops' War ended in June 1639 with a negotiated peace known as the Pacification of Berwick. Outright rebellion had been avoided, but not the spectacle of the king of Scots leading an English army against his own people. The fissures between the three Stuart kingdoms were becoming insurmountable.
After Berwick, the Scottish parliament attempted to release itself from royal control. Charles, of course, raised another army. After the skirmishes of the Second Bishops' War (August 1641) Charles was forced to ratify parliament's Covenanter rulings, pay the Scottish army's expenses, and sit through a Presbyterian service at St Giles'.
However, these 'wars' were hardly victories for the Scots, and there was plenty more trouble to come.Things in Scotland didn't improve for Charles. The kirk's General Assembly abolished his bishops and his Prayer Book. Doubling down, Charles raised an army and marched north, intending to crush this defiance. Unfortunately for him, the English recruits were poorly-trained, while the Covenanters' army included Scottish veterans of the Thirty Years' War.
Neither side was keen to actually fight, and the first so-called Bishops' War ended in June 1639 with a negotiated peace known as the Pacification of Berwick. Outright rebellion had been avoided, but not the spectacle of the king of Scots leading an English army against his own people. The fissures between the three Stuart kingdoms were becoming insurmountable.
After Berwick, the Scottish parliament attempted to release itself from royal control. Charles, of course, raised another army. After the skirmishes of the Second Bishops' War (August 1641) Charles was forced to ratify parliament's Covenanter rulings, pay the Scottish army's expenses, and sit through a Presbyterian service at St Giles'.
However, these 'wars' were hardly victories for the Scots, and there was plenty more trouble to come.
After the Bishops' Wars...
Needing money for fighting the Scottish Bishops' Wars and an Irish Catholic rebellion, Charles reluctantly summoned an English parliament – something he'd avoided for eleven years. But rather than help with fund-raising, this new parliament took the opportunity to raise over a decade's worth of their own grievances.
Charles responded as gracelessly as ever, generally making the wrong moves and badly, so that each problem got worse until eventually combining so that the tailspin of each of his three kingdoms collided with and interfered in the others. This conflict is therefore sometimes called the War of the Three Kingdoms, of which the English Civil Wars and Charles's execution are just a part – but it began in Scotland, at St Giles', Edinburgh.
The consequences of Jenny Geddes throwing her stool in St Giles'
In some accounts, Jenny Geddes throwing her stool in St Giles' cathedral was the catalyst – if not the cause – of a widespread revolution combining religious, political and military opposition to the king, eventually leading to civil wars, regicide, military occupation, and the first unified government of the British Isles. Quite significant consequences, from that one act.
But that's a simple explanation of complex events across three kingdoms. Jenny Geddes couldn't have known all that might follow from her throwing a stool (assuming she even existed). However, the Cutty Stool in St Giles' is a tangible illustration of a moment of change, when the arguments around religious and political authority moved from debate to action.
Image Credits
Woolamaloo_Gazette - Flickr
Kadellar - Wikimedia
The History of Protestantism, James Wylie (1870)
Daniel Mytens' Portrait of James VI/I, National Portrait Gallery
Anthony Van Dyck, 'Portrait of Charles I in Three Positions', Royal Collection - Flickr
The National Covenant, National Museums Scotland
CPClegg - Wikimedia
Franganillo – Flickr
Wenceslaus Hollar's engraving of a riot against Anglican preaching - Wikimedia
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Further Reading
Online:
The Cutty Stool: https://hughsongallery.com/viewWork?work=1
Print:
Ian Atherton, Cathedrals and the British Revolution' in The Experience of Revolution in Stuart Britain and Ireland (2011)
John Coffey, The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Vol 1: The Post-Reformation Era, 1559-1689 (2020)
David Cressy, The Blindness of Charles I (2015)
Fitzroy Maclean & Magnus Linklater, Scotland: A Concise History (1993)
Rosalind K Marshall, St Giles': The Dramatic Story of a Great Church and its People (2009)
Anthony Milton (ed.) The Oxford History of Anglicanism Vol I (2017)
John Morrill, The Religious Context of the English Civil War (1983)
Charles Prior, Religion, Political Thought and the English Civil War (2013)
Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642 (1995)
Laura Stewart, Rethinking the Scottish Revolution: Covenanted Scotland, 1637-53, (2016)
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