Peter Holman's view is that viols and violins were used as alternatives - at least when referring to dance music in the early seventeenth century. This reminded me of another example, a hundred years later,  of gamba and cello being used as alternatives (which, of course, didn't help matters for the gamba): Telemann's Paris Quartets.  It seems that the two instruments were more or less on equal terms at this period, and Telemann took the trouble of producing a separate part, with appropriate clefs and adjustments to suit each instrument.

I then wondered whether the instrument he (Telemann) meant might have been a da spalla and have come to the following conclusions (conjectural). It seems to me - from the quotations I have read so far (see earlier post) that most of the descriptions of the da spalla came from Germany, and from pictorial evidence (such as the girls in Vivaldi's Pieta), from Italy; but in France, the violoncelle that Corrette, Boismortier and Telemann referred to was more likely a 'little Basse de Violon with five or six strings' (Brossard, 1703), played da gamba with overhand bow hold