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Speaker 1: Diversion Audio. The time is Sunday, twenty third of July

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Speaker 1: sixteen thirty seven. The place is the incredible Gothic Cathedral

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Speaker 1: of Saint Giles on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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Speaker 1: The person is a fruit and vegetable trader, and the

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Speaker 1: route she caused during church service arguably set in motion

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Speaker 1: a series of wars that would change British history forever.

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Speaker 1: But before I tell you about Jenny Getty's, let me

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Speaker 1: set the scene, because what she did is so much

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Speaker 1: more badass with appropriate context. Welcome to the greatest true

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Speaker 1: crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer, author of

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Speaker 1: the true crime book Madam Queen, the Life and Crimes

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Speaker 1: of Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair. Today's episode we're calling

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Speaker 1: Jenny Getty's and her Revolutionary Stool. It's the story of

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Speaker 1: a seventeenth century Scottish fruit and veg merchant who triggered

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Speaker 1: a revolution. I'll tell you all about it after this

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Speaker 1: quick break. Saint Giles's Cathedral today is on the Royal Mile.

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Speaker 1: I would argue it's one of the most memorable edifices

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Speaker 1: on a whole street of memorable architecture. Today, the inside

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Speaker 1: is a local artisan market, but in sixteen thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: when our story takes place, it was a church proper. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: it was the Church of Scotland. Outside, in the front

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Speaker 1: courtyard was where the market happened every Sunday. Jenny Getty's

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Speaker 1: our main character, was one such trader. If you're thinking, wait,

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Speaker 1: what a woman entrepreneur in the seventeenth century, it gets

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Speaker 1: a lot more empowering than that. Here's a little context.

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Speaker 1: Up until sixteen twenty five, just twelve years earlier, both

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Speaker 1: Scotland and England had been ruled by one monarch. That's

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Speaker 1: King James the First of England aka King James the

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Speaker 1: sixth of Scotland. If you heard our last bonus episode

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Speaker 1: about the real Witches of Macbeth, then you already know

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Speaker 1: a little bit about King James. For a quick recap,

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Speaker 1: He's the one who oversaw the English translation still known

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Speaker 1: and often used by Protestants today as the King James Bible.

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Speaker 1: He also set the stage for the worst witch hunts

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Speaker 1: in history, which was platformed by his pamphlet on Demonology.

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Speaker 1: It might interest you to know that although King James

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Speaker 1: the First slash sixth married Anne of Denmark and had

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Speaker 1: five children with her. It's an open secret that he

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Speaker 1: was also romantic with men. King James moved from Scotland

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Speaker 1: to England the moment he came to power there. That

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Speaker 1: was sixteen oh three, when Queen Elizabeth died. He only

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Speaker 1: returned to Scotland once, in sixteen seventeen. When King James

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Speaker 1: died in sixteen twenty five, Charles the First came to

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Speaker 1: the English throne, but he didn't get around to being

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Speaker 1: crowned in Scotland until sixteen thirty three, eight years later.

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Speaker 1: It's almost like the British kings didn't care that much

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Speaker 1: about their Scottish subjects. Charles the First's coronation happened in

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Speaker 1: Saint Giles Cathedral. That's the setting of our drama too.

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Speaker 1: It was a church where post Reformation Puritan Protestant Scots worshiped.

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Speaker 1: By the way, I always thought of the Scottish Revolution,

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Speaker 1: as you know, a revolution in which religion became more tolerant.

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Speaker 1: I was exactly wrong. The fifteen sixty Reformations thesis regarding

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Speaker 1: religion was essentially these Catholics and Anglicans are soft, time

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Speaker 1: to crack down, and by that I mean that the

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Speaker 1: Presbyterians of the time thought that Catholic rituals were blasphemous.

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Speaker 1: So in sixteen thirty three, when King Charles the First

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Speaker 1: was crowned in Saint Giles, a Church of Scotland with

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Speaker 1: full Anglican rites, it was not well received. This is

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Speaker 1: relevant to our story because that was a huge clash

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Speaker 1: of ideology the cause. One sect was Anglican that's Church

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Speaker 1: of England, and one was Calvinist that's Church of Scotland.

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Speaker 1: In very general terms, the Anglican Church was a liberal

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Speaker 1: reaction to predestination. The man who performed the Scottish coronation

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Speaker 1: was Charles's new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laude. History knows

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Speaker 1: Laud as one of the quote corrupt bishops who quote

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Speaker 1: misinformed the King of the liturgy and ecclesiology of the

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Speaker 1: Scottish kirk. King Charles the First, by the way, thought

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Speaker 1: that he might try to liberalize his new kingdom. His

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Speaker 1: plan did not go well. I'll tell you all about

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Speaker 1: it right after this quick break. When we left off,

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Speaker 1: King Charles the First had just been crowned and he

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Speaker 1: had decided, along with his Anglican clergy, to catch Scotland

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Speaker 1: up to England's more liberal practices. He did so by

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Speaker 1: printing the quote Book of Common Prayer in Edinburgh, and

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Speaker 1: then he or someone in his entourage more likely bribed

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Speaker 1: the Dean of Saint Giles Cathedral. What he wanted was

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Speaker 1: for Dean John Hanny to sneak in this new book

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Speaker 1: in place of the Church of Scotland prayer Book before

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Speaker 1: service on Sunday the twenty third of July sixteen thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: and Dean Hanny did it. I think Charles's belief that

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Speaker 1: no one would notice this significant change in liturgy illustrates

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Speaker 1: how little he knew his Scottish subjects. Maybe he thought

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Speaker 1: that the congregants would let it slide because they were

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Speaker 1: in church and people tend to be on their best

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Speaker 1: behavior in church. But when Dean Hanny started reading from

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Speaker 1: the new prayer book and it detailed quote the government

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Speaker 1: of the New Church and how the king ruled by

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Speaker 1: divine right, and how ministers, kirk, sessions and presbyteries would

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Speaker 1: all be renamed, the congregation immediately realized what was happening.

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Speaker 1: The altar was at the front, of course, and then

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Speaker 1: the pews were seated according to class. Some of the

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Speaker 1: wealthier people, though, paid so called waiting women to arrive

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Speaker 1: early and save them seats. When their patrons arrived, the

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Speaker 1: waiting women moved to the back where the street sellers sat.

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Speaker 1: The merchants sat behind the pews on portable three legged

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Speaker 1: stools that they brought to the church themselves. Jenny Getty's

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Speaker 1: was among these stool sitters, but she didn't stay seated

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Speaker 1: for long. In fact, no one did. There might have

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Speaker 1: been a m of disbelief or confusion through the church first,

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Speaker 1: but as soon as Jenny Getty's realized what was happening,

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Speaker 1: she stood up, grabbed her stool, and she hurled it

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Speaker 1: at Dean Hanny's head at the front of the church.

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Speaker 1: She yelled in Scot's English, loosely translated devil, cause you coolic,

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Speaker 1: false thief? Do you say Mass in my ear? Whether

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Speaker 1: the churchgoers thought the prayer book was heretical or they

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Speaker 1: were just angry at being tricked, everyone followed suit. I

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Speaker 1: don't know about y'all, but I've definitely wanted to cause

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Speaker 1: a riot in church before. I've never been brave enough

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Speaker 1: to do it in small group, sure, but not in

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Speaker 1: the church in front of God and everybody, all of

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Speaker 1: this congregation was brave enough to do it. And it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just fear of being rude that might have stopped them.

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Speaker 1: The King ordered those prayer books in church, and by

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Speaker 1: writing against the prayer books, they were essentially committing treason.

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Speaker 1: They still threw everything they could get their hands on.

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Speaker 1: They literally threw the book at the podium, bibles, stools,

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Speaker 1: everything got hurled at Dean Hanny. Even after the rioters

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Speaker 1: were expelled from Saint Giles Cathedral, they kept pounding on

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Speaker 1: the door. I don't know who expelled them from the church,

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Speaker 1: but if I had to guess, royal guards anticipating and uprising,

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Speaker 1: but I couldn't find out for sure. What I did

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Speaker 1: learn was that the riot spread through Edinburgh and then

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Speaker 1: through Scotland, and it didn't let up more after the break.

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Speaker 1: Before the break, Charles the First had bribed Dean John

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Speaker 1: Hanny to switch out all the prayer books in Saint

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Speaker 1: Giles Cathedral with new books detailing Anglican rites. The Protestant

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Speaker 1: congregation had realized it right away, and Jenny Getty's stood

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Speaker 1: up and hurled her stool at the dean while cursing

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Speaker 1: him in church. From there the riot happened and the

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Speaker 1: congregation was expelled, But the riot didn't stop just because

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Speaker 1: they were out of the church. Instead, it snowballed, building

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Speaker 1: steam all through the streets of Edinburgh, and the sentiments

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Speaker 1: spilled over into the rest of Scotland, especially when the

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Speaker 1: Scottish Protestants realized that King Charles the First had not

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Speaker 1: consulted the Scottish General Assembly. So Presbyterians expanded their fifteen

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Speaker 1: eighty one Covenant into the National Covenant in sixteen thirty eight.

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Speaker 1: It had around three hundred thousand signatures around the country,

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Speaker 1: though it was first signed in Greyfriars Churchyard. Rather than

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Speaker 1: listen to his subjects, Charles the First tried to force

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Speaker 1: his new doctrine through Britain through the Bishop's War see.

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Speaker 1: The widely held belief of Scottish Protestants was that they

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Speaker 1: could talk directly to God. They didn't need a king

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Speaker 1: or any papal hierarchy to intercede on their behalf, which

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Speaker 1: sounds like they didn't believe in Charles the First divine Right,

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Speaker 1: which sounds like heresy. The first two battles of the

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Speaker 1: Bishop's War ended in a truce in June of sixteen

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Speaker 1: thirty nine, but just two months earlier, Scottish Parliament passed

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Speaker 1: acts that undermined the crown, so Charles mobilized. But this

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Speaker 1: time the Scots won. They seized Northumberland and Durham. I'm

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Speaker 1: generalizing this next part a lot for the sake of

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Speaker 1: clarity and time. The Bishop's War is considered the first

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Speaker 1: conflict in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Those wars

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Speaker 1: covered a lot of ground figuratively and literally, and spanned

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Speaker 1: fourteen years. To name drop a few wars that those

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Speaker 1: in compass, let me say, the First and Second English

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Speaker 1: Civil Wars, the Irish Confederate Wars, Cromwell's conquest of England,

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Speaker 1: and the Anglo Scottish War of sixteen fifty to fifty two.

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Speaker 1: That period ended with the beheading of Charles the First

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Speaker 1: and then came all over Cromwell. Although Cromwell's years were

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Speaker 1: pretty much bad by any standard, the Scottish Church or

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Speaker 1: Kirk remained free until King Charles the Second came to power,

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Speaker 1: which is when the persecution of the Covenanters continued through

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Speaker 1: three rebellions over the course of twenty seven years. Some

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Speaker 1: argue that this whole revolution was set in motion first

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Speaker 1: by Jenny Gettys. I would argue that King Charles the

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Speaker 1: first started it, and Jenny Gettys was the first one

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Speaker 1: to sound the alarm that rallied so many voices behind hers.

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Speaker 1: Not everyone is convinced that Jenny Getty's actually existed, but

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Speaker 1: any true crime listener knows that poor records can just

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Speaker 1: as much mean an omission of fact as an absence

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Speaker 1: of it. At the very least, Jenny Gettys is a

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Speaker 1: folk hero. In the nineteen nineties, Saint Giles Cathedral installed

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Speaker 1: a statue commemorating Jenny Gettys, and the statue is of

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Speaker 1: a stool. But her story was so ubiquitous until recently

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Speaker 1: that even the Scottish poet Robert Burns honored her by

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Speaker 1: naming his horse Jenny. If a poet naming his pet

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Speaker 1: after someone is not a ringing endorsement, I've never heard

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Speaker 1: one in my life. I referenced so many sources in

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Speaker 1: the researching of this mini episode, and all of them

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Speaker 1: are listed in our show's notes. The Greatest True Crime

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Speaker 1: Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm

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Speaker 1: Mary Kay mcbraer, and I hosted this episode. I also

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Speaker 1: wrote this episode. Our show is produced by Leo Culp,

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Speaker 1: Theme music by Tyler Cash, Executive producer Scott Waxman. One

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Speaker 1: more thing before I go. If you haven't already, I'll

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Speaker 1: love you forever. If you pre order my forthcoming true

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Speaker 1: crime book, Madam Queen, the Life and crimes of Harlem's

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Speaker 1: underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair, there's a link to do it

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Speaker 1: at your favorite retailer in our show's Notes