possessory rights in land but also of the governmental and contractual incidents 
of tenure. As long as all these elements are present lordship is synonymous 
with dominium. Lordship comes to mean something different during 
the fourteenth century as respects relations of the King's subjects. 39 But when 
lordship is attributed to the King, the original feudal sense of the term remains 
unaltered. 
The mutations of the term dominium at the hands of the common law courts 
were manifold. 40 In the ordinary causes of meum et tuum, it becomes preeminently 
a word of property law, and irresistibly this mode of thought infects 
judicial thinking when the territorial aspects of the dominion of the King are 
involved. Even Bracton, who in other connections found it convenient to 
resort to Roman distinctions between public and private law, is using the 
vulgar language of English real property law when he says that Ireland and 
Wales are in the power and dominion of the King. 41 
The application of property law concepts to relationships which were essentially 
matters of state, and of no direct connection with the law of the realm 
itself, is characteristic of the way the courts at Westminster made their contribution 
to constitutional development. 42 In this particular instance the process 
was facilitated by the fact that within the realm itself the courts were continually 
dealing with a problem of royal rights that inevitably suggested 
analogies. We refer to the ancient demesne—the lands which had belonged 
to the crown on the day the Confessor was quick and dead. 43 These estates 
are conceived to be annexed to the crown, 44 and to them a peculiar quality of 
immunity attaches: that is to say, they are not parcel of the normal system of 
justice, police, or finance; barring personal actions, the ordinary writs do not 
run here; justice, although administered in the King's name, is essentially 
seignorial, for it is done on the manor and it is the manorial custom which is 
enforced. The common law courts have to deal with ancient demesne chiefly 
by way of review, or collaterally when by plea the matter of status is presented, 
for the franchise pursues the soil and remains even if such lands have come 
into private hands. So far as the tenants are concerned, they are not bound to 
attend the county court or to serve on juries, they are exempt from the sheriff, 
and they are not taxed with the county at large, for they are originally not represented 
in Parliament. On the ancient demesne the aphorism that "the King 
39 Cf. Jolliffe, op. at., 424. 
40 2 Pollock and Maitland, History of English 
Law (1911), 4, 33, 114. 
41 Bracton, De legibus, i. 380b. 
42 Aspects of this are discussed in Goebel, Constitutional 
History and Constitutional Law, 38 
Columbia Law Review, 555. 
43 On this, Coke, Fourth Institute, 269 et seq.; 
Vinogradov, Villeinage in England, 89 et seq.; 
1 Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., 383 et seq. 
44 Fleta, lib. 1, c. 8: "Antiqua maneria vel jura 
Coronae annexa Regi, non licebit alienare . . ."