The breakdown of fiscal policy at the time of James's Scottish journey marks a watershed in both finance and kingship. Upon his return to England James engaged more intensively with policy and governance. Although this involved a return to the more active personal rule of the earlier period of the reign, paradoxically, within the next two years a distinctively new regime emerged. While the regime which lasted until 1610 took its character from the personal rule of a male monarch and its successor, kingship-by-favourite, the late Jacobean regime was unique in the rise of Villiers to ‘minister-favourite’ and, eventually, to alter-rex. If there was a lesson to be learned from Villiers's success in supplanting Carr, it was that Carr's inconsequential profile in governance aided his enemies. Villiers and ambitious governors around him like Cranfield and Bacon used the collapse of fiscal policy and James's resultant anger to their advantage. They and their colleagues took on the mantles of reformers, attacking mismanagement and failed policy in the cause of genuine reform and as a vehicle for political advantage. It became a political virtue to support and actually be seen to further – however imperfectly – good fiscal governance. Villiers enhanced his power and position by inserting himself as a governor in the reform process. As long as James and his governors proceeded from a workable consensus of what sound finance entailed, the policy was relatively effective, as was perhaps most strongly demonstrated when James successfully presented himself as a practitioner of good husbandry in the parliament of 1621. However, that session nevertheless revealed ongoing problems in the interaction of kingship and finance.