remained united against the Church. Nor is it without significance that its adoption was shortly followed by Cromwell's fall. Henry did not approve of ministers who sought to make a party for themselves. The packing of Parliaments has in fact been generally the death-bed expedient of a moribund Government. The Stuarts had their "Undertakers," and the only Parliament of Tudor times which consisted mainly of Government nominees was that gathered by Northumberland on the eve of his fall in March, 1553; and that that body was exceptionally constituted is obvious from Renard's inquiry in August, 1553, as to whether Charles V. would advise his cousin, Queen Mary, to summon a general Parliament or merely an assembly of "notables" after the manner introduced by Northumberland. [Footnote 724: _L. and P._, i., 2082.] [Footnote 725: Holinshed, _Chronicles_, iii., 956.] [Footnote 726: Hallam, _Const. Hist._, ii., 4.] [Footnote 727: _L. and P._, ii., 1314. In some respects the House of Commons appears to have exercised unconstitutional powers, _e.g._, in 1529 one Thomas Bradshaw, a cleric, was indicted for having conspired to poison members of Sir James Worsley's household, and on 27th February, 1531, Henry VIII. orders Lady Worsley not to trouble Bradshaw any more, "as the House of Commons has decided that he is not culpable" (_ibid._, iv., 6293; v., 117; _cf._ the case of John Wolf and his wife, _ibid._, vi., 742; vii., _passim_). The claim to criminal jurisdiction which the House of Commons asserted in Floyd's case (1621) seems in fact to have been admitted by Henry VIII.; compare the frequent use of acts of attainder.] [Footnote 728: Foxe, ed. Townsend, vi., 33.] [Footnote 729: _Ibid._, vi., 43.] [Footnote 730: In the House of Lords in 1531 the Bishops of St. Asaph and of Bath with a similar immunity attacked the defence of Henry's divorce policy made by the Bishops of Lincoln and London (_L. and P._, v., 171).] [Footnote 731: _Narratives of the Reformation_ (Camden Soc.), p. 25.]