from Coperario {i.e., John Cooper). Also Playford (temp. Charles II.) says of Charles I. that the king "often appointed the service and anthems himself" in the Royal Chapel; "and would play his part exactly well on the bass-violl,"—i.e., the viol da gamba.
George Herbert, who was by birth a courtier, found in music "his chiefest recreation," "and did himself compose many divine hymns and anthems, which he set and sung to his lute or viol. … His love to music was such, that he went usually twice every week … to the cathedral church in Salisbury; and at his return would say that his time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was his heaven upon earth." But not only was the poet-priest a lover of church music, for (Walton's Life goes on) "before his return thence to Bemerton, he would usually sing and play his part at an appointed private music meeting." This was fourteen years after Shakespeare's death.
Anthony Wood, who was at Oxford University in 1651, gives a most interesting account of the practice of chamber music for viols (and even violins, which, by Charles II.'s time, had superseded the feebler viols) in Oxford. In his Life, he mentions that
