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.

[Illustration:  THE PURITAN.]

The Academy at Banbury was famous as the place where Dean Swift began to write his famous satire entitled Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, the reading of which had been one of the pleasures of our schoolboy days.  He was said to have copied the name from a tombstone in the churchyard.