. . .Italian songs which, I must in a word say, I think was fully the best musique that I ever yet heard in all my life." (Dec. 21, 1663.)

[Pg 19]

Cooke composed a considerable number of pieces of music for various royal and festal occasions; one curious hymn for a ceremony in connection with a festival service of the Knights of the Garter at Windsor was accompanied by "two double sackbuts and two double courtals placed at convenient distances among the classes of the gentlemen of both choirs, to the end that all might distinctly hear, and consequently keep together both in time and tune; for one sackbut and courtal was placed before the four petty canons who begun the hymn, and the other two immediately before the prebends of the college."

Captain Cooke's services were frequently required on the stage,[11] and with his many accomplishments there is no great wonder that he became conceited. Pepys, from whom so many quotations have already been . . . Read More