Cocker, Edward

(1631/2-1676), calligrapher and arithmetician

by Ruth Wallis

© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved

Cocker, Edward (1631/2-1676), calligrapher and arithmetician, is sometimes said to have come from Northamptonshire but this is unsubstantiated. Nothing is known of his parentage and early life. He published five copybooks in 1657; one, The Pen's Triumph, mentions an earlier Pen's Experience, now untraced, as his first work. By 1657 he was married, and teaching writing and arithmetic in St Paul's Churchyard, London. He and his wife, Joanna (or Joane), had two sons--Edward (1658-1723), also a penman, and Charles (1661-1674).

Further books followed thick and fast, much to the consternation of rivals; in all, Cocker engraved more than two dozen. This proliferation was the output of a virtuoso performer with pen and burin. He 'delighted to embroider his copy-books with fantastic creatures, exotic birds ... his knots and flourishes are wonderful pieces of exuberant penmanship' (Heal, 36). His originality extended to interspersing his instruction with rhyming couplets. Samuel Pepys, describing him as 'the famous writing-master' (10 Aug 1664), employed him to engrave his slide-rule, and admired his skill in executing such fine work.

Cocker engraved plates for other authors--about 1660 for his friend, James Hodder, and in 1664 at least sixty-seven plates for Richard Daniel, and four plates in The Young Clerk's Tutor by J. H. of Staple-Inne. His own Tutor to Writing and Arithmetic (1664) was part letterpress, part engraved, with arithmetic outlined as far as the rule of three.

In the autumn of 1664 Cocker removed about 100 yards from St Paul's Churchyard to start a school in Gutter Lane; in 1667 he was teaching in Northampton, perhaps as a consequence of the great fire of 1666. By 1674 he was back in the City, and shortly set up school again by the church of St George the Martyr, Southwark, a move probably forced on him by committal for debt to the king's bench prison; he could have purchased the privilege of living outside but near the prison. He died in the poverty which seems to have dogged him all his life, due to the turbulent times, and possible losses in the fire. It may be assumed that he died at his schoolhouse, as he was buried at the church on 26 August 1676. The verse broadside of 1675, Cocker's Farewel to Brandy, ending in the death of a drunkard, must have been written by him, not about him, as sometimes suggested.

Although famous as writing-master and engraver during his lifetime, Cocker became more so in death. In 1678 his friend and successor in the Southwark school, John Hawkins (fl. 1676-1692), published Cockers Arithmetick, being a Plain and Familiar Method, which he claimed to have taken from Cocker's manuscripts. This textbook, originally of 334 pages, had reached its twentieth edition by 1700 and its fifty-fifth by 1758; there were others with repeat numbering or none, besides at least eight Dublin editions and some at Edinburgh and Glasgow up to 1787. Its popularity might have derived from its being adapted to the requirements of trade rather than those of the gentry and their tutors. In a popular play of 1756 Cocker's Arithmetick was dubbed 'best Book that ever was wrote' (Murphy, 10), with four more mentions, spawning the phrase (not Murphy's) 'according to Cocker'; both book and man became bywords for authority. It is for his arithmetic rather than his calligraphy that Cocker is remembered.

In 1685 Hawkins published Cocker's Decimal Arithmetick, including logarithms and algebra, with a sixth and final edition in 1729. Then J. Back, a bookseller involved with the Arithmetick, issued in 1696 Cockers Accomplish'd School-Master, 'The like never published', without explaining its origin, and A. Back in 1704 produced Cocker's English Dictionary 'from the Authors Correct copy, by John Hawkins'. Strange to say, Hawkins had died in 1692; the Backs were probably fraudulently capitalizing on Cocker's name.

In the nineteenth century Augustus De Morgan, who considered Hodder's Arithmetick superior to Cocker's, also cast doubt on the authenticity of the latter, claiming that it was largely, if not wholly, a forgery by Hawkins. His 'proofs' are, however, extremely weak. The style of the preface and typical concluding couplet appear to proclaim it as genuine Cocker. De Morgan himself rather undermined his own thesis in a textual analysis intended to ridicule the writer's verbosity, by not recognizing that this completely accorded with Cocker's character.

Equally, there is no doubt that Cocker in his lifetime intended to publish on arithmetic. Two publishers' advertisements, in 1661 and 1669, attest to this. The presumption therefore remains that Cockers Arithmetick and Cocker's Decimal Arithmetick, both undoubtedly edited by Hawkins, are the Compleat Arithmetician described in the advertisements, and are indeed 'according to Cocker'.

RUTH WALLIS

Sources  
R. Wallis, 'Edward Cocker ... and his Arithmetick: De Morgan demolished', Annals of Science, 54 (1997), 507-22
A. Heal, The English writing-masters and their copy-books, 1570-1800 (1931), 33-7, 43, 58-9, 135-45
W. A. Smith, "According to Cocker" (1887)
J. C. Witton, 'Cocker's Arithmetic', N&Q, 2nd ser., 3 (1857), 95-6
[E. Hatton], A new view of London, 1 (1708), 247
S. P. Rigaud and S. J. Rigaud, eds., Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century, 2 (1841), 471
A. Murphy, The apprentice (1756)
Pepys, Diary, 5.237-9, 289-92 [10-11 Aug 1664, 5 and 7 Oct 1664]
A. De Morgan, Arithmetical books from the invention of printing to the present time (1847), 46, 56-62

Archives  
Magd. Cam., Pepys "calligraphical collection"

Likenesses  
engraving, c.1657, repro. in E. Cocker, Pen's triumph (1657)
engraving, c.1660, repro. in E. Cocker, Pen's transcendencie (1660)
engraving, in or before 1670, repro. in E. Cocker, Urania, or, The scholar's delight (1670?)
E. Cocker?, self-portrait?, engraving, repro. in Heal, English writing-masters, pl. 7
engraving (at older age), BL; repro. in E. Cocker, Multum in parvo, or, The pen's gallantry (1686)
oils (after R. Gaywood), NPG

Wealth at death  
in debt: Heal, English writing-masters, 33


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