I have no doubt that the particular instance of Zeal in the cause of the Church at Banbury, which Addison had in mind when he wrote No. 220. of the Tatler, published Sept. 5, 1710, was a grand demonstration made by its inhabitants in favour of Dr. Sacheverell, whose trial had terminated in his acquittal on March 23 of that year. And my opinion is strengthened by the introduction almost immediately afterwards of a passage on the party use of the terms High Church and Low Church.
On June 3, 1710, the High Church champion made a triumphal entry into Banbury, which is ridiculed in a pamphlet called The Banb..y Apes, or the Monkeys chattering to the Magpye; in a Letter to a Friend in London. On the back of the title is large woodcut, representing the procession which accompanied the doctor; among the personages of which the Mayor of Banbury (as a wolf), and the aldermen (as apes), are conspicuous figures. Dr. Sacheverell himself appears on horseback, followed by a crowd of persons bearing crosses and rosaries, or strewing branches. The accompanying letter-press describes this procession as being closed by twenty-four tinkers beating on their kettles, and a "vast mob, hollowing, hooping, and playing the devil." There is another tract on the same subject, which is extremely scarce, entitled—
"An Appeal from the City to the Country for the Preservation of Her Majesty's Person, Liberty, Property, and the Protestant Religion, &c. Occasionally written upon the late impudent Affronts offer'd to Her Majesty's Royal Crown and Dignity by the People of Banbury and Warwick: Lond. 8vo. 1710."
To your correspondent H.'s (p. 222.) quotation from Braithwait's "Drunken Barnaby" may be added this extract from an earlier poem by the same writer, called "A Strappado for the Divell:"
"But now for Bradford I must haste away:
Bradford, if I should rightly set it forth,
Stile it I might Banberry of the North;
And well this title with the town agrees,
Famous for twanging ale, zeal, cakes, and cheese."
A few words on "Banbury Cakes," and I have done. The earliest mention of them I am aware of (next to that in Camden's Britannia, published by Philemon Holland in 1608, and already referred to), is by Ben Jonson, in his Bartholomew Fair, written 1614; where he introduces "Zeal-of-the-Land Busy" as "a Banbury Man," who "was a baker—but he does dream now, and see visions: he has given over his trade, out of a scruple he took, that, in spiced conscience, those cakes he made were served to bridales, maypoles, morrisses, and such profane feasts and meetings." I do not know whether the sale of Banbury cakes flourished in the last century; but I find recorded in Beesley's Hist. of Banbury (published 1841) that Mr. Samuel Beesley sold in 1840 no fewer than 139,500 twopenny cakes; and in 1841, the sale had increased by at least a fourth. In Aug. 1841, 5,400 were sold weekly; being shipped to America, India, and even Australia. I fancy their celebrity in early days can hardly parallel this, but I do not vouch for the statistics.