 Unfortunately for More, his failure to be convinced by the spiritual worth of mystical Kabbalah contributed to an increasing distance between him and his great friend Anne Conway. Van Helmont had become interested in Quakerism and introduced Anne to a number of leading Quakers, including George Fox (1624–1691), Robert Barclay (fl. 1670), George Keith (1638?–1716), and William Penn (1644–1718). Evidently the Quakers favoured the Kabbalah and Anne, increasingly favoured the Quakers. During this time Anne was writing her own philosophical system which was published posthumously as The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690 in Latin, 1692 in English). It is essentially a monistic system in which all things are made of spirit, and she criticises during the course of it not only the materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza, but also the dualism of Descartes, and her erstwhile mentor, More (Conway 1996, Hutton 2004). It seems clear that Anne was growing intellectually, and spiritually, away from More, and seems to have regarded her new Quaker friends, a number of whom evidently now colonised Ragley Hall, as closer to her own developing beliefs. A letter from Lord Conway of 1677 even says that the Quakers in the Hall “have free access to my wife, but I believe Dr. More, though he was in the house all the last summer, did not see her above twice or thrice” (Nicolson 1992, 439–40). More himself during this period seems to have been torn between trying to dissuade her from joining the Quakers, and respect for Anne’s carefully thought-out decision to embrace their teachings. Indeed, More even showed a grudging respect for the Quakers themselves, who were obviously serious and sincere, and in some respects their enthusiasms matched his own tendencies in that direction.