Thirteen at the time he joined the Chapel Royal in 1660, Humfrey was Blow’s senior by a couple of years, and it was he whom Charles dispatched to study on the Continent when his voice broke four years later. It was rumored that in addition to his musical studies Humfrey also managed to engage in the odd bit of spying on behalf of his royal master, although no evidence has emerged to verify the claim. What does seem certain is that he returned to England, as Pepys irritably put it, “a proper Monsieur”, enabled by his experiences to indulge the King’s taste in anthems that featured extensive instrumental symphonies and ritornellos in the style of the grands motets Humfrey had heard in France. The cultural shock occasioned to a generation reared on the simple unaccompanied psalms of the Puritans must have been profound, and the sentiments articulated by the diarist John Evelyn were no doubt shared by many: “... a consort of twenty-four violins between every pause after the French fantastical light way, better suiting a tavern or a playhouse than a church....” But at his finest, as in the extended penitential verse anthem O Lord my God, Humfrey was capable of striking a deeper vein that also embraced strong Italianate rhetorical expressivity, a combination of styles that was to find its apotheosis in the synthesis achieved by Purcell. The early death of Humfrey in 1674 undoubtedly deprived English music of a highly talented composer. Two years before his death Humfrey had succeeded Cooke as Master of the Children, a position that was now filled by his former fellow chorister John Blow. Thus amongst the pupils of both men was the young Henry Purcell, who had entered the Chapel Royal in 1668 as a boy of eight or nine. Before he had done so, Purcell’s London had been struck by two by cataclysmic events. In March 1665 threatened war with the Dutch became a reality. Worse was to follow. An unusually severe winter during which the Thames froze over was followed by one of the hottest summers on record. Incipient signs of plague that had emerged during the spring became an epidemic. Those who could left the capital, but for those who remained life became a precarious thread. By September the death toll had reached up to a thousand a day, and only with the return of cooler weather in October did the figures start to subside. A year later new catastrophe struck. As if on cue to act as a cleansing of the aftermath of plague, on September 2 fire broke out at a baker’s in the city. A change of wind direction rapidly spread the conflagration, which took hold of merchants’ warehouses containing highly inflammable materials. The Great Fire that followed would burn for five days, taking with it much of the old City of London, including 87 parish churches.