Thus far the association of cakes with zeal in the case of Banbury. It is worthy of remark that cakes had formerly not unfrequently a religious significance, from their being more used at religious seasons than at other times. The triangular cakes made at Congleton, in Cheshire, have a raisin in each corner, thought to be emblematic of the Trinity; the cakes at Shrewsbury may have had something to do with its old religious shows. Coventry, on New Year's day, has its God-cakes. Then we have the Twelfth-cake with its bean; the Good Friday bun with its cross; the Pancake, with its shroving or confessing; and the Passover cake of the Jews. The minced pie was treated by the Puritans as a superstitious observance; and, after the Restoration, it almost served as a test for religious opinions. According to the old rule, the case or crust of a minced pie should be oblong, in imitation of the cradle or manger wherein the Saviour was laid; the ingredients of the mince being said to refer to the offerings of the Wise Men.
Returning to the Banbury cake: in a Treatise of Melancholy, by T. Bright, 1586, we find the following:—"Sodden wheat is a grosse and melancholicke nourishment, and bread especially of the fine flour unleavened. Of this sort are bag puddings made with flour; fritters, pancakes, such as we call Banberrie Cakes; and those great ones confected with butter, eggs, &c., used at weddings; and however it be prepared, rye, and bread made thereof, carrieth with it plentie of melancholie."
At Banbury, the cakes are served to the authorities upon state occasions. Thus, in the Corporation accounts of this town, we find a charge of "Cakes for the Judges at the Oxford Assizes, 2l. 3s. 6d." The present form of the cake resembles that of the early bun before it was made circular. The zeal has died away, but not so the cakes; for in Beesley's History of Banbury, 1841, we find that Mr. Samuel Beesley sold, in 1840, no fewer than 139,500 twopenny cakes; and in 1841, the sale increased by at least a fourth. In August, 1841, 5,000 cakes were sold weekly; large quantities being shipped to America, India, and even Australia.
The cakes are now more widely sold than formerly, when the roadside inns were the chief depôts. We remember the old galleried Three Cranes inn at Edgware, noted for its fresh supplies of Banbury cakes; as were also the Green Man and Still, and other taverns of Oxford Road, now Oxford Street.
Banbury Cheese, which Shakspeare mentions, is no longer made, but it was formerly so well known as to be referred to as a comparison. Bishop Williams, in 1664, describes the clipped and pared lands and glebes of the Church "as thin as Banbury cheese." Bardolf, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, compares Slender to Banbury cheese, which seems to have been remarkably thin, and all rind, as noticed by Heywood, in his Collection of Epigrams:—
"I never saw Banbury cheese thick enough,
But I have often seen Essex cheese quick enough."
The same thought occurs in Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1601:—
"Put off your cloathes, and you are like a Banbury cheese—nothing but paring."
In the Birch and Sloane MSS., No. 1201, is a curious receipt for making Banbury cheese, from a MS. cookery book of the sixteenth century. A rich kind of cheese, about one inch in thickness, is still made in the neighbourhood of Banbury.
We have already traced the destruction of the Cross at Banbury to the leaven of fanaticism. The nursery rhyme,