and Gascony. 163 The recasting involved a conversion of the relatively selfcontained 
feudal curia, such as had earlier flourished in the great honors, into 
a body susceptible of functioning as a stage in an administrative hierarchy. 
Inevitably the power of origination is cut down, and these bodies are made to 
serve as recipients of policy directions from above. At the same time a sphere 
of local authority is conserved, the content of which is subject to considerable 
fluctuation. In certain particulars these councils resemble the later American 
provincial councils, but it will not do to put them in a chain of title until their 
history has been more thoroughly explored. 
The Welsh principality was subjected to special handling. Here the Statute 
of Rhuddlan, having reserved to the crown large powers of interpretation, 
addition, and subtraction, put beyond doubt the dependency of any local 
agency to the royal will. As the central administration of this place was organized 
under Edward of Carnarvon, 184 and later under the Black Prince, 185 
a degree of insulation was achieved. This did not involve any return to feudal 
principle, for we have here a studied reproduction of royal organization. The 
dispositions put one in mind of the eighteenth-century proprietary colonies, 
a parallel which embraces the supervening power of royal ordinance and the 
subject's eventual recourse to the crown. 
The capitis diminutio suffered by the curiae in the several dominions was a 
development of some significance in the evolution of imperial administration, 
since it proved to be a preparative for the exercise of an ordinance power by 
the King in which the element, of consensus was minimal. This could hardly 
have come about if the feudal character of the councils had been maintained, 
and if the principle of participation in declarations of law and custom had not 
been undermined. These changes were accompanied by a progressive enlargement 
of the suzerain's authority, a process of accumulative intervention which 
eventuated in a new legal theory. This is a process with which any American 
who has watched the advance of executive power in the last half century is 
fully cognizant. 
We have been using the term "suzerainty" as if the content of the King's 
lordship was substantially the same in every dominion. The common law 
courts, whether following the line of their property concepts or, later, their 
prerogative theory, seem to have recognized only distinctions in the manner 
of acquisition of dominion. This possessed some legal significance, but it was 
103 On the Council of Ireland, see Clarke, Fourteenth 
Century Studies (1937), 1; cf- also 
Richardson and Sayles, The Irish Parliaments of 
Edward I, in 38 Proceedings of the Royal Irish 
Academy, 128. On the Gascon council, see 
Lodge, Gascony under English Rule, 144 et seq. 
104 Waters, The Edwardian Settlement of North 
Wales (1935), 31 et seq. 
165 5 Tout, Chapters in the Administrative 
History of Mediaeval England (1930), 297 et 
seq., 382 el seq.; Evans, Flintshire Ministers 
Accounts, 1328-53 (1929), vi et seq.