[Footnote 975: Parliament prefered to risk the results of Henry's nomination to the risk of civil war, which would inevitably have broken out had Henry died in 1536. Hobbes, it may be noted, made this power of nomination an indispensable attribute of the sovereign, and if the sovereign be interpreted as the "King in Parliament" the theory is sound constitutionalism and was put in practice in 1701 as well as in 1536. But the limitations on Henry's power of bequeathing the crown have generally been forgotten; he never had power to leave the crown away from Edward VI., that is, away from the only heir whose legitimacy was undisputed. The later acts went further, and entailed the succession upon Mary and Elizabeth unless Henry wished otherwise--which he did not. The preference of the Suffolk to the Stuart line may have been due to (1) the common law forbidding aliens to inherit English land (_cf. L. and P._, vii., 337); (2) the national dislike of the Scots; (3) a desire to intimate to the Scots that if they would not unite the two realms by the marriage of Edward and Mary, they should not obtain the English crown by inheritance.]