The inhabitants of this Oxfordshire town (now noted for its cakes) seem to have been the subjects of ridicule and sarcasm from very early times; chiefly on account of their zeal for the Puritan cause. Thus BANBURY-MAN (-BLOOD or -SAINT) = a hypocrite (cf. popular saying, ‘A BANBURY MAN will hang his cat on Monday for catching mice on Sunday’); BANBURY-WIFE = a whore; BANBURY-STORY (or BANBURY TALE OF A COCK-AND-A-BULL) = an extremely improbable yarn (GROSE), ‘silly chat’ (B. E.); BANBURY-GLOSS = a specious reading; BANBURY-VAPOURS = the stock-in-trade of a Puritan agitator; BANBURY-CHEESE = the thinnest of poor cheese (HEYWOOD: ‘I never saw BANBURY CHEESE thick enough’): hence a term of contempt. Also proverbs (HOWELL, 1660): ‘Like BANBURY TINKERS, who in stopping one hole make two’; ‘As wise as the mayor of BANBURY, who would prove that Henry III. was before Henry II.’
c. 1535. LATIMER, Sermons and Remains (1845), II. 299. In this your realm they have sore blinded your liege people and subjects with their laws, customs, ceremonies, and BANBURY GLOSSES, and punished them with cursings.
1598. SHAKESPEARE, Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 1. 10. [To Slender.] You BANBURY CHEESE!
1601. MARSTON, Jake Drum’s Entertainment: or the Comodie of Pasquill and Katherine, III. 178.
| Put off your cloathes, and you are like a BANBERY CHEESE, | |
| Nothing but paring. |
1614. JONSON, Bartholomew Fair. Dramatis Personæ. Zeal-of-the-Land Busy … a BANBURY MAN … [i. 3]. I knew divers of those BANBURIANS when I was in Oxford … [i. 3]. Rabbi Busy … a prophet … he was a baker, but he does dream now and see visions; he has given over his trade. [Ibid., iii. 1.] These are BANBURY-BLOODS o’ the sincere stud, come a pig-hunting. [Ibid., v. 3]. Busy. I look for a bickering ere long, and then a battle. Knock. Good BANBURY VAPOURS. [Ibid.] Masque of Gypsies. From the loud pure WIVES OF BANBURY … Bless the sov’reign and his hearing.
1636. DAVENANT, The Wits, i. 1.
| She is more devout | |
| Than a weaver of BANBURY, that hopes | |
| To intice heaven, by singing, to make him lord | |
| Of twenty looms. |
1647. CORBET [Harleian Miscellany, i., 274]. The malignants do compare this commonwealth to an old kettle with here and there a crack or flaw; and that we (in imitation of our worthy brethren of BANBURY), like deceitful and cheating KNAVES, have, instead of stopping one hole, made three or four score.
1648. BRATHWAITE, Drunken Barnaby’s Journal.
| Through BANBURY I passed, O profane one, | |
| And there I saw a PURITANE one | |
| Hanging of his Cat on Monday | |
| For killing of a Rat on Sunday. |
1863. G. A. SALA, The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, i. 1. 15. I did ever hate your sanctimonious BANBURYMEN.
