This ordinance is important in two or three particulars. It raised the price per mile for post horses from 2-1/2d, as provided by Stanhope's notice (issued in the king's name a few months previously), to 3d. per mile; it gave the postmasters a practical monopoly of hiring-out horses on the roads; but in return they were required to carry the regular mails within their several stages once a week "free without charge," and to deliver letters directed to their own towns and districts. The meaning of the term here used, "free without charge," is not very clear, for immediately thereafter the document proceeds to say that the work was to be done "in consideration that the Master of the Letter Office is to pay them their wages according to the Reglement set downe by the Lords Committees." What this Reglement was it is not now possible to ascertain, for unfortunately there is a hiatus in the records of the Lords' Proceedings from 1628 to 1640, within which period the events to which we refer occurred. It may be that for the regular weekly service, no mileage rate was to be charged, a revised daily wage being granted which, together with the additional halfpenny per mile authorised to be levied upon travellers, would remunerate the postmasters for carrying the mail. But the postmasters were further required, apparently, to convey letters sent "express" to or from the king and certain specified officials, from stage to stage, without fee or payment; the arrangement being a great relief to the king's exchequer, inasmuch as, on many occasions, such conveyance would dispense with the necessity for sending through-messengers with the letters to destination. Labels or way-bills were also first introduced under this order, and the markings on the letters themselves discontinued. It should be borne in mind that at this period the country was in a very considerable state of commotion. Charles had had a taste of Parliament early in his reign, and he did not like it. He resented the trammels that such a body of men imposed upon his actions; and he desired to be a real king, like the continental potentates. Accordingly, he dispensed with the calling together a Parliament during the period from 1629 to 1640: he ruled by means of a Council, who made the laws, directed public affairs, and generally guided the vessel of the State. His Principal Secretaries were Sir John Coke and Sir Francis Windebank; his other chief advisers were Laud and Wentworth.