On 28 July 1657, General George Monck anxiously awaited the receipt of ‘a letter to the [Scottish] council concerning the revenues of Scotland, and also concerning the expenses’. He was well aware of the urgency of settling the rickety finances of the civilian and military administration north of the border, and that the English council ‘expect an answer from us’. Yet the revenue orders did not arrive. In a report of 29 July the clerk of the Irish council, Thomas Herbert, was able to solve the mystery:

As it later became apparent, the postman had also been ‘stripped of what he had’ and dumped on the Scottish coast, prompting the authorities there to give him £3 in compensation and a pass to return to Dublin. This incident demonstrates the problems inherent in governing a multiple state: the inefficiency of a centralised bureaucracy, the hazards of government by pen. But it also points to problems specific to the Cromwellian protectorate, especially the interruption to government caused by the Scottish council's need to gain authorisation from Whitehall for administrative reforms, and the extent to which politicians in the English council, either accidentally or deliberately, could cause immeasurable problems for their counterparts in Edinburgh or Dublin.

Government by council lay at the very heart of the protectoral system.