Your 'Thomas Hobson Cooke Series II 15" f/4.5 knuckler' will be a 'Taylor Hobson Cooke Series II 15" f/4.5 knuckler'.
Taylor, Taylor & Hobson (TTH) licensed the triplet design from T Cooke and Sons of York, but there was never a company called 'Cooke' producing them. The modern day Cooke Optics website (Cooke Optics Ltd was incorprated in 1998) tends to give the impression that there was. That website used to have a fine section on the history of the varous TTH lenses, but it has now sadly disappeared. Of course TTH marketed the Cooke brand vigorously, and it became a household name and a byword for excellence (as it still is, no doubt).
Both of your Series II lens are likely to be fairly mild in terms of softness, even on the maximum 'soft' setting. I have heard that the knucklers are slightly softer but I don't have one to compare. I think they were intended to soften portraiture rather than give a pictorialism style 'arty' softness in the way that other soft focus lenses do.
Great collection of lenses. If you take the advice to shoot them at no more than +1 stop max then I would focus them at the taking aperture, they should be bright enough, and you might stand more chance of WYSIWYG (or maybe not!)
Lastly you probably know this already but the Kodak badged Ilex #5 used for the 305mm Ektar has different threads to the standard Ilex #5. Getting the shutter you have repaired might be the best bet, the Kodak badged ons will be like hen's teeth.
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