It was in August 1643, as we have seen, that Milton put forth anonymously his _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_. From that time, on through the rest of the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4, we are to fancy him in his house in Aldersgate Street, with his father and his pupils for his companions, and his thoughts much occupied, like those of other Englishmen, with the course of public events. On the whole, the Parliament had no greater admirer than Milton; and there were particular men in the Parliament that were after his own heart. From the Westminster Assembly, too, he seems to have expected good. So far as he had formed views as to the desirable form of Church-government for England, these views, as we have seen (Vol. II. pp. 376-382), might be described as an expectant Presbyterianism, not positively fixed and determined at all points, but kept conveniently fluid. Accordingly, his sympathies, at first, may well have been with the Presbyterians of the Assembly; among whom he could reckon, at any rate, his old tutor Young, and his other friends and fellow-labourers in the Smectymnuan controversy. Or, if some things among the tenets of the small Independent minority had begun to gain upon him, he seems still, through the winter of 1643-4, to have looked forward to some compromise that should be acceptable to England and yet tend to that conformity between the two kingdoms which the Scots desired, and to the furtherance of which they had pledged England by Henderson's international League and Covenant. At all events, Milton did, some time after September 1643, subscribe to this League and Covenant with the rest of his Parliamentarian countrymen. There are words of his own which vouch the fact. [Footnote: In the dedication to Parliament of his _Tetrachordon_, published March 1644-5, he uses these words, "That which I saw and was partaker of, your vows and solemn covenants."] A moody time though the autumn of 1643 and the winter of 1643-4 must have been for Milton, there was some relaxation for him in society more general than that of his wife-deserted household. "Our author," says Phillips, "now as it were a single man again, made it his chief diversion now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Ley, daughter to the--Ley, Earl of Marlborough, Lord High Treasurer of England, and President of the Privy Council to King James the First. This lady, being a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honour for him, and took much delight in his company; as likewise her husband, Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman." Phillips seems to be sufficiently accurate in this account, but a few details may be added:--