ST GILES, WEST WINDOW.
[SOME MEMORANDA OF THE OLD KIRK OF ST GILES.]
The central portion or transept of St Giles’s Church, opening from the south, formed a distinct place of worship, under the name of the Old Church, and this seems to have been the first arranged for Protestant worship after the Reformation. It was the scene of the prelections of John Knox (who, it will be remembered, was the first minister of the city under the reformed religion), until a month before his death, when it appears that another portion of the building—styled the Tolbooth Kirk—was fitted up for his use.
John Knox’s Pulpit.
It also happened to be in the Old Kirk that the celebrated riot of the 23rd of July 1637 took place, when, on the opening of the new Episcopal service-book, Jenny Geddes, of worthy memory, threw her cutty-stool at the dean who read it—the first weapon, and a formidable one it was, employed in the great civil war.[72]