Taking a fresh approach, this study stresses the destabilising effect of Whitehall's demands for power and money, which increased rapidly in the quarter century before 1642. These national demands had a profound impact on the county, for they permitted an impoverished magnate to maintain his family's traditional grip over the local administration and to halt his own descent into bankruptcy. The careful calibration of the burden of the state on the loal community illustrates the surprising vitality of the early Stuart regime and the policial orogins of the Civil War.