On the whole, it is certain that one consequence of the outcry about Milton's treatise among the London Presbyterians, and especially among the city clergy and the Divines of the Assembly, was to drive Milton more arid more into the society of those who had begun to dislike and to dread the ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Finding himself, almost from the first publication of the treatise, as he tells us, in "a world of disesteem" on account of it, he naturally held intercourse more and more with those who, though they may not have approved of _his_ particular heresy, yet, as being themselves voted heretics on other accounts, were more easy in their judgments of all extreme opinions. I believe, in fact, that, could Milton's acquaintanceships in London from the winter of 1643- 4 onwards be traced and recovered, they would be found to have been chiefly among the Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, and other Tolerationists. What were the religious opinions of the Lady Margaret Ley, that "woman of great wit and ingenuity," and her husband Captain Hobson, "a very accomplished gentleman," with both of whom he was so intimate about this time, and who, as Phillips tells us, "had a particular honour for him and took much delight in his company," must be left to conjecture. [Footnote: It has been in my mind whether the Captain Hobson who was the Lady Ley's husband, and whom Dagdale describes as "... Hobson of... in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," can by possibility have been the same person as the Baptist preacher, Paul Hobson, who was also a Captain in the Parliamentary Army, and who figures much in Edwards's _Gangræna_ and in other books of the time, under the express name of "Captain Hobson," as a leading Sectary, though Edwards will have it that he was originally "a tailor from Buckinghamshire" (_antè_, p. 148). The supposition seems so absurd that I hardly like to mention that I spent hours in turning over Paul Hobson's published sermons and Baptist treatises in case I might come on any confirmation of it--which I did _not_.]