Deputies of the three orders united their efforts in the hope of regaining the right of periodically sanctioning taxation. They voted the "taille" for two years only, at the same time reducing it to the amount it had reached at the end of the reign of Charles VII. They demanded, and obtained, the promise of the Crown that they should be summoned again before the two years had ended. But this promise was not kept, and the Estates General were not summoned again until 1560. During this 76-year interim, successive kings expanded the role of the centralised state through various means. In the mid-16th century, public officials ("officiers") explored the option of forming a fourth order of their own but their attempts went nowhere, largely between of the attractiveness of the nobility to many of them.