This threat he was prepared to put in execution, and did, in 1645, as
Phillips tells us, contemplate a union, which could not have been a
marriage, with another woman. He was able at this time to find some
part of that solace of conversation which his wife failed to give him,
among his female acquaintance. Especially we find him at home in the
house of one of the Parliamentary women, the Lady Margaret Ley, a lady
"of great wit and ingenuity," the "honoured Margaret" of Sonnet x. But
the Lady Margaret was a married woman, being the wife of a Captain
Hobson, a "very accomplished gentleman," of the Isle of Wight. The
young lady who was the object of his attentions, and who, if she were
the "virtuous young lady" of Sonnet ix., was "in the prime of earliest
youth," was a daughter of a Dr. Davis, of whom nothing else is now
known. She is described by Phillips, who may have seen her, as a very
handsome and witty gentlewoman. Though Milton was ready to brave
public opinion. Miss Davis was not. And so the suit hung, when all
schemes of the kind were pat an end to by the unexpected submission of
Mary Powell.

Since October, 1643, when Milton's messenger had been dismissed
from Forest Hill, the face of the civil struggle was changed. The
Presbyterian army had been replaced by that of the Independents, and
the immediate consequence had been the decline of the royal cause,
consummated by its total ruin on the day of Naseby, in June, 1645.
Oxford was closely invested, Forest Hill occupied by the besiegers,
and the Powell family compelled to take refuge within the lines of
the city. Financial bankruptcy, too, had overtaken the Powells. These
influences, rather than any rumours which may hare reached them of
Milton's designs in regard to Miss Davis, wrought a change in the
views of the Powell family. By the triumph of the Independents Mr.
Milton was become a man of consideration, and might be useful as a