John Winthrop the Younger Archives - New England Historical Society

On Dec. 24, 1706, Judge Samuel Sewall brought a Banbury cake to a sick friend in Boston. Sewall, best known as one of the Salem witch trial judges, served for many years as chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature. He had a wide circle of friends, and kept a diary for 50 years. In it, he recorded much that happened of significance in Massachusetts during the late 17th and early 18th century. He also included his own inability to get a date.

Samuel Sewall

Sewall’s diary also reveals the workings of a staunch Puritan mind, which brings us to the Banbury cake.

Banbury Cake

The Banbury cake originated in a Puritan stronghold, the town of Banbury in Oxfordshire, England. It’s a pastry stuffed with spiced currants or other dried fruit. Banbury bakers have made them since the 16th century.

The first recipe appeared in Gervase Markham’s The English Huswife in 1615. It starts with four pounds of currants to make “a very good” (and very large) Banbury cake. Then one takes flower (flour), barm (leaven or yeast), butter, cream and sugar and “works it together for an hour.” The pastry surrounds the currants, and the whole thing is baked “according to bigness.”

Banbury cake, illustration by Leslie Landrigan

The characteristic Banbury cake has an oval shape with three slashes across the top. It got famous over the centuries. In 1869, Robert Chambers wrote, in his Book of Days, the cakes “are exported to the most distant parts of the world, one baker alone, in 1839, disposing of 139,500 twopenny ones.”

Banbury had a reputation for cheese, cakes and ale, though some have said its fame rested on cheese, cakes and zeal. They referred to the extreme Puritanism that characterized its inhabitants. Banbury’s zealous Puritans prompted the English poet Richard Braithwaite to write in 1638,

To Benbury came I, O profane one!
There I saw a Puritane one,
Hanging of his cat on Monday,
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.

You’ve probably heard a different poem about Banbury:

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

Banbury still has a cross, though not the original. The Banbury Puritans tore it down (too Papist) around the time of the English Civil War.

Statue of Banbury’s Fine Lady and cross (atop steeple)

Saye-and-Sele

One of the staunchest Puritans who lived near Banbury was William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye-and-Sele. He supported colonization of North America. In 1632, he got a deed of conveyance for a large tract of land along the Connecticut River and his company appointed John Winthrop the Younger to serve as governor. Saybrook, Conn., bears his name, along with another incorporator, Lord Brooke.

We know of other Puritans from Banbury who came to New England during the Great Migration. The Rev. Samuel Newman, for example, emigrated from Banbury to Dorchester (now a Boston neighborhood), then helped found Rehoboth, Mass. And Samuel Borman emigrated to Ipswich, Mass., from Banbury.

Arthur Wellington Brayley speculated the Massachusetts Puritans especially enjoyed the Banbury cake. Brayley noted how Samuel Sewall brought one to a sick friend in his 1909 book, Bakers and Baking in Massachusetts, Including the Flour, Baking Supply and Kindred Interests, from 1620 to 1909.

“Banbury was also famous for its Puritanism, and this savor may have extended to its cakes,” Brayley wrote.

Mr. Bayley’s Banbury Cake

Samuel Sewall wrote the following about his Christmas Eve visit in his diary:

Visited Mr. Bayley as I came home: he has a very sore Mouth. He tells me he has left off observing the distances of his Fits, is tired and done. I gave him a Banberry cake, of which he eat pretty well, complaining of his Mouth.

As a good Puritan, Sewall noted with approval all the shops opened for business the next day — Christmas.

And, to his credit, he later apologized for his role in the Salem witch trials.

There are plenty of recipes for Banbury cake on the internet. Here’s one we’ve adapted from The English Kitchen.

Ingredients

1 lb. all-butter puff pastry, cold
3/4 cup turbinado sugar
1/4 cup butter
scant cup sultana raisins
scant cup dried currants
1/2 cup finely chopped candied citrus peel
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon mixed spice (see recipe below)
1/3 cup granulated sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400*F. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
Measure the fruit, spices, peel and butter into a bowl along with the turbinado sugar. Mix well, using your hands, until the mixture clumps. Shape into nine evenly sized balls.
Roll the chilled puff pastry out on a lightly floured surface to a 15-inch square, no more than 1/8 inch thick. Cut into nine five-inch squares. Place a ball of fruit filling into the middle of each square. Bring four corners up over the filling to meet in the middle and pinch shut. Pinch all four sides shut as well. Flip over and lightly flatten into a circle in the palm of your hand. Using a rolling pin, with the folds on the bottom, gently roll into circles. They should be four inches in diameter and 1/2 inch thick.
Brush the tops lightly with water. Measure the granulated sugar into a bowl and lightly press the wet tops of the cakes into the sugar.
Place onto the baking sheets, leaving plenty of space in between. Using a sharp knife, make three slashes into the top of each.
Bake for 25 minutes. Allow to cool on the baking sheets. Best eaten on the day.

Spice Mix

Combine 1 tablespoon cinnamon, 1-1/2 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon coriander and nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon each of ground cloves and all spice. Mix well and store in an airtight container out of the light for up to six months.

For more about the Banbury cake, click here.

Image: The Fine Lady and Banbury Cross By Jongleur100 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7439313. This story last updated in 2022.

Francis Lovelace languished in the Tower of London in 1675, unaware he had created the Boston Post Road two years earlier and forever shaped New England. boston post road rider feature

He had been the royal governor of New York, and he had sent the first official post rider to Boston. Sometime in February 1673, the first mail ever arrived in Boston from New York City via the Boston Post Road. (Some put the date at Feb. 6, some at Feb. 11. All dates Old Style.)

The first post rider started out sworn to obey Lovelace’s instructions to behave civilly, to ask the governor of Connecticut how to form the best post road and to mark the trees for the direction of passengers.

Thus Francis Lovelace initiated both the U.S. Postal Service and the Boston Post Road.

All Boston Post Roads Lead to New Haven

There are actually three Boston Post Roads, all of which merge in New Haven.

The Upper Road, or the Old Boston Post Road, runs from Boston through Worcester, Springfield and Hartford.

The Lower Road heads south from Boston through Dedham and Providence, then runs along the coast of the Long Island Sound.

The Middle Road, less used than the others, leaves Boston through Dedham, Medway, Uxbridge, Douglas, Pomfret and Coventry to Hartford, then to New Haven through Wethersfield, Berlin, Meriden, Wallingford and North Haven.

Much of the Post Road is now U.S. Routes 1, 5, and Route 20.

King Charles II

Though Francis Lovelace set out the guidelines for what would become the Boston Post Road, King Charles II had the idea first.

Charles II

Charles had decided to seize the tiny colony of New Netherland and give it to his brother, the Duke of York. He sent four warships to the settlement and demanded the Dutch surrender. They did. Charles appointed Francis Lovelace, brother of the poet Robert Lovelace. as royal governor. He wanted to knit his English colonies together more closely – especially since the Dutch just might try to recapture New York.

Charles wrote to Lovelace in 1672. “His Sacred Majestie” had “injoined his American subjects to enter into a close correspondency with each other.”

On Dec. 27, 1672, Lovelace wrote to Connecticut Gov. John Winthrop the Younger, presenting him with two “rarities:” a “pacquet of the latest intelligence I could meet withal, and a post.”

He wrote that he thought Charles’ idea “as the most compendious means to beget a mutual understanding.”

Winthrop was the perfect person to help carry out such a plan. He had traveled the post road himself.

Winthrop’s Journey

John Winthrop the Younger

In the earliest days of the New England colonies, towns were surrounded by wilderness. The only roads emanated from the meetinghouse. To the extent the towns were connected, they were connected by Indian trails – a foot-and-a-half wide in some places, across surging rivers in others.

In 1635, someone had actually journeyed to Connecticut from Boston and returned safely. The Puritan leader, John Winthrop, found that remarkable.

Ten years later his son, 39-year-old John Winthrop the Younger, loaded his horse and set out from Boston on foot along what was then called ‘The Bay Path’ (later the Upper Boston Post Road). He intended to find a spot to start an ironworks along the Connecticut coast.

Howling Winds

Winthrop traveled through howling winds, heavy snow, driving rain and freezing temperatures. He slept on the ground, filling a net with grass for a blanket. He got lost several times, fell into a stream once and cut down a tree to cross another.

In Hartford, Winthrop stayed in an actual tavern, which the leaders of Connecticut had asked Thomas Ford to run because of “want of entertainment.”

Gristmill built by John Winthrop the Younger in New London as it looked in the 20th century.

He passed through Saybrook in bad weather and waited six days to cross the mouth of the Connecticut River before arriving at his destination – New London. He found a spot that suited him for his ironworks and returned along the coast of the Long Island Sound to Providence – then known as the Pequot Path, later the Lower Boston Post Road. In Providence he stayed with Benedict Arnold, the traitor’s great-grandfather. Several days later, exhausted, he reached Boston. The trip took 26 days. “Deo gratias,” he wrote at the end of his travel diary, or “Thank God.”

John Winthrop the Younger then moved his family to Connecticut and became the state’s longest serving governor.

Mr. Post Rider

After about 1650, the colonists began to travel more frequently between towns. There were few horses in the first decades of the 17^th century. As the equine population grew, New Englanders could ride longer distances. And as trade with the West Indies flourished, they drove their livestock from the interior to market on the coast.

In 1672, Winthrop received the letter from Lovelace seeking his cooperation in setting up the mail service. He would have received the letter from a Native American, a shipmaster, a servant, a traveler or maybe a cattle driver.

Lovelace proposed recruiting a post rider, “a stout fellow, active and indefatigable, and sworne as to his fidelity.” He was to “cause to be apprehended all fugitive soldiers and servants.”

On the first Monday of every month, the post rider was to leave New York and return from Boston within the month. Hartford was to be the first relay station for him to change his horse.

The mail was to be in different “baggs,” one for each town to which the mail would be delivered.

Lovelace suggested that Winthrop talk to “some of the most able woodmen,” to find the easiest way, which eventually would become the Boston Post Road.

First Mail

Lovelace intended the first mail to leave New York on Jan. 1, 1673. Lovelace waited, though, because he wanted to send Winthrop the latest rumors about a convoy of Dutch warships. The post rider left on Jan. 22, 1672/3.

The Memorial History of New York describes the reaction to that first post rider, Mathias Nicolls.

It is recorded as creating great excitement in the little village of Harlem, when that first postman drew up at the tavern door to refresh himself, as he undoubtedly did, with some good home-brewed Harlem beer — his ‘port mantles’ (portmanteaux) crammed with ‘letters and small portable goods,’ the ‘locked box’ in the office of the colonial secretary accumulating the next month’s mail, and what he had brought, being carried to the ‘coffee house’ to be ‘well thumbed’ until called for.’

Boston as it looked during the first mail delivery.

Nicolls continued his monthly journey. In July of that year, Lovelace rode from New York to Hartford to discuss the postal service with Winthrop.

They agreed, for example, the post rider should direct travelers, who could accompany him, to the best roads and inns.

But while Gov. Lovelace was meeting with Gov. Winthrop in Hartford, a Dutch naval squadron appeared in New York Harbor. The city surrendered and the Netherlands won back Niew Amsterdam.

Lovelace returned to England in disgrace. The Duke of York blamed Lovelace for the loss of the colony named after him. Lovelace owed him 7000 pounds, and York confiscated his estates. Committed to the Tower, Lovelace contracted dropsy. Authorities released him in April 1675. Francis Lovelace died broke on Dec. 22, 1675.

Francis Lovelace

Postscript

The Dutch gave up New York in a little more than a year, but King Philip’s War broke out and temporarily ended the postal service.

The challenges of riding from Boston to New York along the Boston Post Road were vividly described in the journal of Sarah Kemble Knight.

With thanks to The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America by Eric Jaffe and The Old Post Road by Stewart H. Holbrook. This story updated in 2023.