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Banbury Cake, the Puritans’ Favorite Treat

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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.

sewall

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400*F. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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. 

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When John Alden Went to Jail for Murder

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Most school children know the story of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, but few know he went to jail for murder.

He didn’t stay long, and he didn’t do it, but the story reminds us that the Pilgrims strayed far from Plymouth Colony. They had a trading business in Maine that did so well it let them repay their considerable debt to their financial backers.

John Alden and Priscilla Mullin

John Alden

Not much is known about John Alden until he met the Pilgrims as a 21-year-old in Southampton, England. They hired him as the Mayflower’s cooper, to make the barrels and casks that carried all the food, drink, clothing and gunpowder on board the ship.

Alden could have gone back to England, but he chose to stay. It was a wise choice. He emerged as a leader of Plymouth Colony, serving on the Governor’s Council and as treasurer, deputy to the General Court and a member of the Council of War.

Alden also belonged to the group of eight who assumed a large debt.

London merchants had underwritten their Mayflower voyage and provisions to establish Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims, however, had a hard time repaying them during those lean first years—in fact, they ended up borrowing even more.

But they made a deal in 1626 that bought them time. The merchants’ partnership broke up, and eight colonists agreed to assume their debt in exchange for a monopoly on the fur trade along the Kennebec River in Maine.

The Kennebec Patent

The year before they made that deal, Plymouth Colony had had a good harvest with enough surplus corn to trade. “It pleased ye Lord to give ye plantation peace and health and contented minds, and so to bless their labours, and they had corne sufficient, (and some to spare to others,) with other foode,” wrote William Bradford.

A handful of young men, including John Howland, loaded the surplus corn into a shallop that came with them in the Mayflower. They then sailed it up the coast of Maine and up the mouth of the Kennebec River. At the head of the river they came upon an Abenaki village, where they traded the corn for 700 pounds of beaver fur.

That highly profitable trip convinced the colonists to set up a trading post, in what was known as Koussinoc or Cushnoc. Today it’s known as Augusta.

The Plymouth colonists managed to obtain a patent for the land along the Kennebec and to build a bigger boat to carry on their trade. They built a trading house and stocked it with trade goods: “coats, shirts, ruggs, & blankets, biskett, pease, prunes” and, of course, corn, according to Bradford.

Exporting beaver furs to Europe was a lucrative business. The Cushnoc trading post made enough profit for the Plymouth colonists to pay back their creditors in 12 years. They ran the trading post for 40.

cushnoc

Site, including plaque, of the Cushnoc trading post in Augusta.

But why did they have to go all the way to Maine to trade with indigenous people for beaver fur? Because Myles Standish had made an ill-considered attack on two Massachusett leaders, luring them to a meal and then killing them. That pretty much ruined relations with the local tribes with whom the Pilgrims had traded furs.

Another question: Why is history so silent on the Plymouth colonists’ trading post at Cushnoc? Some have speculated that the colonists themselves didn’t want word to get out about their money-making operation.

Murder on the Kennebec

John Howland ran the trading post for several years. John Alden, along with other Pilgrims such as Edward Winslow and William Bradford, visited Cushnoc to bring supplies.

Alden had come to Cushnoc in the spring of 1634 when a dispute broke out over trading rights. A man named John Hocking, or possibly Hoskins, from Piscataqua (New Hampshire) sailed up the Kennebec in a boat owned by his bosses, Lord Brook and Lord Saye (from whom Saybrook, Conn., took its name).

Hocking sailed past Cushnoc to trade with the Indians who would paddle down the Kennebec with canoes full of furs. The Plymouth colonists maintained they had exclusive rights to trade in the area and told Hocking to leave. Hocking refused, anchoring his vessel in the river.

John Alden, deputy governor at the time, told Howland to cut Hocking’s line. So Howland ordered four of his men to cut the cable to Hocking’s bark. They took a canoe into the river, and paddled toward Hocking, who threatened to shoot them unless they stopped. The Plymouth men cut one anchor cable, and then tried to cut the other. Hocking shot one man, Moses Talbot, dead.

The three remaining men returned fire, shooting John Hocking in the head and killing him.

“The rest of ye men carried home the vessel and ye sad tidings of these things,” wrote Bradford.

John Alden, Jailbird

Several months later, John Alden visited Boston on business, and the General Court ordered him jailed. A relative of John Hocking had brought a complaint against Alden.

Massachusetts Bay Colony had no jurisdiction over Plymouth or Kennebec, but went ahead and arrested him anyway. John Winthrop explained in his journal that they feared the king would send over a governor general once he got word of the unpleasantness at Kennebec. And the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony wished to continue to govern themselves.

new-england-living-standards-john-winthrop

Portrait of John Winthrop, American Antiquarian Society.

William Bradford sent Myles Standish to Boston to explain what happened, and Gov. Thomas Dudley set Alden free.

The Courtship of Priscilla and John Alden

What may not have happened to John Alden got far more historical recognition than what did happen.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem The Courtship of Miles Standish about a love triangle between Alden, Standish and Priscilla Mullins. Longfellow, through his mother, was descended from John and Priscilla. He claimed the story came down through his family.

In the tale, John Alden and Myles Standish are roommates in Plymouth Colony in 1621. Both have their eyes on Priscilla who was, in fact, the only marriageable woman in the colony at the time. Standish asks Alden to propose to Priscilla on his behalf. Priscilla replied, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

Historian John Goodwin wrote there’s no reason for believing any of it. The story of John Alden going to jail, however, is true.

With thanks to Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. Image of Cushnoc site By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=280178. This story was updated in 2022.

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When Cleveland Belonged to Connecticut

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The City of Cleveland and nearly all of Northeastern Ohio once belonged to Connecticut. The land, 3.5 million acres of it, was called the Western Reserve.

cleveland western reserve map

It’s why a university in Cleveland is called Case Western Reserve. Towns in Northeastern Ohio have Connecticut names like Norwich, Saybrook, New London, Litchfield, Mansfield and Plymouth. Some of those towns even have New England-style commons and white meetinghouses.

Cleveland-area schoolchildren, at least the ones paying attention, know well the story of Connecticut pioneer Moses Cleaveland. He brought 50 men and women to the shores of Lake Erie in 1796. Less well known is how Connecticut got the land in the first place.

Colonial Imperialism

Moses Cleaveland

Moses Cleaveland

For a small colony, Connecticut had big ambitions. It wanted to own parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and much of America’s western frontier – all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

So in 1662, Connecticut’s governor John Winthrop the Younger went to England with the draft of a charter extending the colony’s lands and political rights. He intended to present it to King Charles II and ask for his approval and royal signature.

He had a little problem, though. Connecticut’s Puritans had supported Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Cromwell deposed Charles’ father, King Charles I. A panel of 59 commissioners – ‘king killers’ – sat in judgment of Charles and signed his death warrant. He was beheaded in 1649. Eleven years later, Charles II returned to the throne and sought revenge on the men who ordered his father’s execution. He had Cromwell’s body dug up and his head cut off for display outside the palace.

Three king killers fled to America, where they found refuge in New Haven. Because of that, Winthrop knew Charles had attitude about Connecticut.

When Winthrop arrived in England, he got an audience with the King. At the start of the interview, Winthrop showed him ‘a rich, massive gold finger-ring.’ The King’s father had given it to his own father, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop, ‘as a mark of honor for valuable political services.’ The gesture moved Charle to tears.

So Charles granted Connecticut a charter extending its north and south boundaries to the Pacific Ocean. No one really knew how much land that meant. That was the same charter hidden in the Charter Oak when Gov. Edmund Andros tried to seize it.

Western Reserve

In Ohio, the Western Reserve was a 120-mile strip of land from Lake Erie to a line just south of what is now Akron and Youngstown.

At the western end of the Reserve, 500,000 acres were set aside for people whose homes were burned by British troops during the American Revolution. The land was called the Firelands and the Sufferers’ Lands. Most of the fire victims sold their claims to land speculators. Few ever settled in the Firelands.

After the American Revolution, Connecticut gave up some of its land to the federal government in exchange for its war debt, but it hung on to the Western Reserve.

Map of the Western Reserve

Meanwhile, prominent and wealthy men formed the Connecticut Land Company to buy the Western Reserve and divide it into lots.

Most of them came from the Town of Suffield, which once belonged to Massachusetts. The speculators included:

Sometime around 1795, Connecticut sold the Western Reserve to the Connecticut Land Company for $1,200,000. Cleaveland was sent to survey the land into townships and negotiate with the Indians who lived there.

Becoming Cleveland

Cleveland Skyline

Cleveland Skyline

Moses Cleaveland brought a surveying party of 50 with him. Some traveled on horseback, some by boats. The arrived at the mouth of Conneaut Creek and Lake Erie on July 4, 1796.

The group then celebrated its arrival in what would become Cleveland with toasts to the president of the United States, the state of New Connecticut and the Connecticut Land Company.

Then they wished the ‘Port of Independence and the 50 sons and daughters who have entered it this day be successful and prosperous.”

“May these 50 sons and daughters multiply in 16 years 16 times 50,” they toasted. And they wished every person ‘have his bowsprit trimmed and ready to enter every port that opens.”

They then gave three cheers, drank several pails of grog and went to bed.

Cleaveland Becomes Cleveland

On July 22, Cleaveland landed at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. He climbed the bank and saw a beautiful plain that looked like a good place for a city. So he paced out a 10-acre town common that is now Public Square. His followers called the place Cleaveland.

Moses Cleaveland then returned to Connecticut and died there some years later. He never returned to the Western Reserve.

There are several stories about how Cleaveland became Cleveland. One says a newspaper editor in 1830 discovered that ‘Cleaveland’ was too long for a headline, so he left out the ‘a.’ Another is that Cleaveland’s surveyors spelled it Cleveland on the original map.

In 1800, Connecticut finally gave up its sovereignty over the Western Reserve. Ohio then became a state in 1803.

Map: CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1290884. Photo of Cleveland: By No machine-readable author provided. Avogadro94~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1061960

This story was updated in 2022.

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