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on the south side of St Paul's Churchyard, over against St Paul's Chain ... where he taught the art of writing and arithmetick in an extraordinary manner.Cocker started a public school near St Paul's. He is mentioned in letters of Collins to Wallis in 1666-67 and by that time he was living in Northampton.
He wrote Cocker's Arithmetic in 1678 which was very famous and more than 100 editions were to appear. A phrase according to Cocker was common usage for many years; it meant absolutely correct .
The editor of the 1678 first edition of Cocker's Arithmetic was a John Hawkins and it has been claimed that he was the author, rather than Cocker. However it will probably never be possible to verify or disprove this claim.
Cocker had a large collection of manuscripts and books on science. On his death he left several unpublished works and these were published by Hawkins.
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