For some years after the Restoration the administration of English colonial affairs had been very lax. The Council of Plantations, which had served as a Colonial Office during the period from 1660 to 1672, had done little to control the Governors or to supervise and direct their policies. With the exception of one list of questions sent to Virginia in 1670, they had left Sir William Berkeley almost entirely to his own devices. September 27, 1672, the Council of Plantations was united with the Board of Domestic Trade to form the Council of Trade and Plantations. This new arrangement seems not to have been productive of good results, for in December, 1674, after the fall of the Cabal ministry, it was discontinued and the direction of colonial affairs entrusted to the King's Privy Council. This important body, finding its new duties very onerous, created a committee of twenty-one members, to whom the supervision of trade and plantations was assigned. In this way the King's most trusted ministers were brought into close touch with colonial affairs. We find now such prominent statesmen as Secretary Coventry, Secretary Williamson and Sir Lionel Jenkins carrying on extensive correspondence with the Governors, becoming interested in all their problems and needs, and demanding copies of all journals of Assembly and other state papers.[882] This closer intimacy with the colonial governments led inevitably to a feeling of intolerance for local autonomy and for representative institutions, and to a determination to force upon the colonists a conformity with the policies and desires of the English government. Charles II and James II, instituted, in the decade preceding the English Revolution, a series of measures designed to curb the independence of the colonists. Some of the Assembly's long-established and most important rights were attacked. Many of its statutes were annulled by proclamation; its judicial powers were forever abolished; its control over taxation and expenditure was threatened; the privilege of selecting the Assembly clerk was taken from it; while even the right to initiate legislation was assailed. The intolerant mood of the King and Privy Council is reflected in the instructions given Lord Culpeper upon his departure for Virginia. They included orders depriving him of the power, exercised freely by all former Governors, of calling sessions of the Assembly. "It is Our Will and pleasure," Charles declared, "that for the future noe General Assembly be called without Our special directions, but that, upon occasion, you doe acquaint us by letter, with the necessity of calling such an Assembly, and pray Our consent, and directions for their meeting."[883]