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.]

[Footnote 732: Hence the complaints of the northern
rebels late in that year (_L. and P._, xi., 1143,
1182 [15], 1244, 1246); these are so to speak the
election petitions of the defeated party; the chief
complaint is that non-residents were chosen who
knew little about the needs of their constituents,
and they made the advanced demand that all King's
servants or pensioners be excluded.

The most striking instance of interference in
elections is Cromwell's letter to the citizens of
Canterbury, written on 18th May, 1536, and first
printed in Merriman's _Cromwell_, 1902, ii., 13; he
there requires the electors to an