Behind the formal institutional facade of parliament lay the reality of political activity. Although such activity was normally positive and constructive, it could assume a negative, obstructive, even destructive, character. Whatever form it took at a given moment, its end was usually a legislative one – politics and legislation were but two faces of the same process. The enactment or frustration of a bill was not a simple mechanical process, isolated from the mixture of high idealism and self-interest, hostility and alliance, competition and collaboration, which inevitably characterise any assembly of men. In this respect the Lords was probably the more important House. Its lay majority stood at the centre of a web of social connections which included the membership of the Commons. Many of the knights and burgesses were attached to peers by bonds of friendship, kinship, deference and clientage; and frequently their election was guaranteed or assisted by the support of a duke of Norfolk, an earl of Bedford or Pembroke, or other powerful regional magnates. Although political parties did not exist, it would not be fanciful to imagine that sometimes the lords temporal – and the occasional bishop – utilised the services of relatives and clients in the Lower House in order to advance their own measures and obstruct others. It proved also to be a more convenient and safe course of action to resist the Crown by proxy, through the Commons, than to engage in open confrontation in the Lords.