The county of Staffordshire, several days travel from the main seat of power in London, had a long-standing disinclination to paying taxes and levies imposed by the King. James I's Privy Council was forced to write to the county's Justices of the Peace for their failure to raise a single penny to support the King's campaign to reclaim the Palatinate in Germany for his son-in-law Frederick V in the 1620s. The county was also slow to pay Charles I's ship money which began to be levied (in defiance of the Parliament) on the inland counties in 1634 and saw much resistance. Open dissent against the King's decrees occurred in 1640 in objection to the levying of 300 men from the county for the King's campaign against the Scots. Riots took place in Uttoxeter with an armed guard having to be formed to prevent the levy from deserting.