"To Whitehall Chapel, where sermon almost done, and I heard Captain Cooke's new musique. This the first day of having vialls and other instruments to play a symphony between every verse of the anthems, but the musique more full than it was last Sunday, and very fine it is. But yet I could discerne Captain Cooke to overdo his part at singing, which I never did before." (September 14, 1662.) "We had an excellent anthem sung by Captain Cooke and another, and brave musique.... After dinner to chappel again, and there had another anthem of Captain Cooke's." (May 18, 1662.) "A most excellent anthem with symphonys between, sung by Captain Cooke." (Sept. 7, 1662.) "Captain Cooke, and his two boys, did sing some 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.) 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 made, wrote: "A vain coxcomb he is, though he sings so well;" and this charge of vanity is supported by other evidence. A contemporary historian says: "Captain Cooke was the best musician of his time till Mr. Pelham Humphreys, one of the children of the chapel educated by himself, began to rival him, after which he died with great discontent."[12] Cooke was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in July, 1672. During the years that he was master of the children of the chapel he had as pupils many who won for themselves distinguished names as musicians, amongst them notably Pelham Humphreys, Wise, Blow, Turner, and Purcell. Purcell profited by Captain Cooke's instructions for a period of eight years--from the age of six to that of fourteen, a very important time in the life of a clever boy. Historians seem to have forgotten this fact, and have been disposed to credit the whole of Purcell's musical education to Pelham Humphreys or to Dr. Blow.