ABSTRACT
On 22 February 1629 Charles heard that the Commons had called some of his customs officers to the bar of their House to question them about levying tonnage and poundage. Immediately the king summoned the privy council to tell them that the collectors had acted ‘by his own direction and commandment’. In many respects England’s government returned to a more normal pattern during this time. The failure of Charles’s government to create mechanisms to replace those lost by the absence of parliament was as serious, if not more serious, in areas other than finances. Charles did not work at winning his subjects’ loyalty. He preferred the pleasure of hunting from county to county to the tedium of state visits, with long addresses from petty worthies. Charles upset the Scots by continually putting off going to Edinburgh to be crowned.
