BANBURY CROSS.
The rhyme must, like many others, have been of great antiquity, for the old Cross of Banbury had been removed by the Puritans in the year 1602, and its place taken by a much finer one, recently erected to commemorate the marriage of the Emperor Frederick of Germany to the Princess Royal of England. The fine lady and the white horse were also not to be found, but we heard that the former was supposed to have been a witch, known as the Witch of Banbury, while the white horse might have been an emblem of the Saxons or have had some connection with the great white horse whose gigantic figure we afterwards saw cut out in the green turf that covered the white chalk cliffs of the Berkshire Downs. The nursery rhyme incidentally recorded the fact that the steps at the base of the Cross at Banbury were formerly used as a convenience to people in mounting on the backs of their horses, and reminded us of the many isolated flights of three or four stone steps we had seen on our travels, chiefly near churches and public-houses and corners of streets, which had been used for the same purpose, and pointed back to those remote times when people rode on horseback across fields and swampy moors and along the pack-horse roads so common in the country long before wheeled vehicles came into common use.
We had eaten Eccles cakes in Lancashire, and Shrewsbury cakes in Shropshire, and had walked through Scotland, which Robbie Burns had described as—
The Land o' Cakes and brither Scots,
but we had never heard of Banbury cakes until we walked through the streets of that town, and found that the making of these cakes formed one of its leading industries. The cakes in Scotland were of a sterner, plainer character than those farther south, the cakes at Banbury being described as a mixture between a tart and a mince-pie. We purchased some, and found them uncommonly good, so we stowed a few in our bags for use on our way towards Oxford. This industry in Banbury is a very old one, for the cakes are known to have been made there as far back as 1602, when the old Cross was pulled down, and are mentioned by Ben Jonson, a great dramatist, and the friend of Shakespeare. He was Poet Laureate from 1619, and had the honour of being buried in Westminster Abbey. In his comedy Bartholomew Fair, published in 1614, he mentions that a Banbury baker, whom he facetiously named Mr. "Zeal-of-the-Lord Busy," had given up the making of these cakes "because they were served at bridals and other profane feasts." This baker, we imagined, must have been a Puritan, for from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of Charles II Banbury had been noted for the large number of Puritans who lived there, and for their religious zeal; they had even been accused of altering the names of the staple industries of the town from "Cakes and Ale" to "Cakes and Zeal," and were unpopular in some quarters, for Braithwaite in his Drunken Barnaby cuts at them rather savagely:
To Banbury came I, O profane one:
Where I saw a Puritane one
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.