There are other muniments of medieval administration, some of which 
will be considered later, that contribute details to the framework of what may 
be called an imperial constitution. This is a designation we use with some 
reserve. It is essentially a mere political description, for whatever may be the 
probative impact of a body of precedent on the manner and form of dispatching 
business, this alone cannot supply the catalyzing force of a coherent and 
pliable legal doctrine. This was not forthcoming, because the ultimate word 
rested in the King, who, although universally admitted to be the source of all 
law, was equally the source of final political decision. In other words, the point 
where conclusions of principle had to be reached was also the most tender 
to considerations of expediency. Nevertheless, the fact that in one way or another 
Council, Parliament, and common law courts had to cope with matters 
connected with places outside the realm produced, if not a theory, at least 
certain materials for one. We shall consider first what the common law courts 
had to contribute. 
By the time of Edward I, when it was apparent that England had become 
the center of a congeries of royal possessions, the limits of competence and 
jurisdiction of the courts at Westminster were fixed both geographically and 
in the broader national sense. Although they were King's courts, they were preeminently 
courts for the realm. The heart and viscera of their law was the 
corpus of original writs, devised primarily for the assertion or defense of private 
rights. The ambit of these writs was limited; the arm of English justice would 
reach no further than they could go. In consequence the common law which 
polarizes about these mandates is a law principally for the realm. 
It is manifest that for practical reasons the central courts could not ignore, 
nor could the law be impervious to, aspects of royal authority outside the realm. 
After all, this was King's business as much as the duties they were discharging 
for England itself. Although they cannot speak law for places where the King's 
writs are not current, they must define the posture of their own law if someone 
in Ireland is vouched to warranty, 36 if a protection for service in Gascony is 
interposed in an action, 37 or if some question about Welsh lands is involved in 
a personal action. 38 In so far as the common law arrived at any generalization 
regarding the outlands, it was embodied in the conception "dominions of the 
King," although sometimes these are referred to as places without the realm, 
but within the ligeance of the King. The word dominium, from which this 
derived, came into the law with the Normans and is one of those protean terms 
of eleventh-century feudalism. It is definitive not merely of proprietary or 
38 Fitzherbert, Abridgment, Jurisdiction, 34 
(YB 6 Hen. V). 
3« Cf. YB 21-22 Edw. I [R.S.], 3°B 
Fitzherbert, Abridgment, Protection, 55 (YB 
17 Hen. VI).