By his remarkable longevity Child forms a link between the Chapel Royal of Gibbons and Hooper with that of Purcell and Blow. Nominally Organist of St George’s, Windsor, from 1630 to his death, he lost the post at the Commonwealth in 1649, composing a fine, old-fashioned lament 'for the abolition of the Book of Common Prayer'. At the Restoration he joined the Chapel Royal as one of the Organists and clearly spent all his time as a musical man about London, rarely visiting Windsor and featuring regularly in Samuel Pepys’s diaries: '7 November 1660 … after dinner … called for the Fiddles and books and we two and W.Howe and Mr. Childe did sing and play some psalms of Will. Lawes and some songs'.