too rough a classification, for it concealed the nuances of political relations 
which, as we have already noticed, made each dominion a special problem in 
the matter of appeals. We think such factors were equally involved in the 
growth of the ordinance power. Both in Ireland and in Wales the fact of conquest 
was a warrant for action with respect to the law at large that did not 
exist in places like the Channel Islands or Gascony. The introduction of the 
common law in Ireland was in exercise of a prerogative that arose out of the 
circumstances of acquisition. Once this law was there planted, however, the 
reasons which supported the exercise of supervisory authority over the legal 
system within the realm were equally applicable to Ireland. Similarly, and in 
spite of Edward's pious professions about his sworn duty to root out bad 
customs, the Statute of Rhuddlan was the act of a conqueror. Whatever was 
done by way of royal ordinance thereafter, must in the light of the statutory 
reservations rest upon the same title. 
Elsewhere the English King stood upon softer legal ground. The Channel 
Islands he had as duke of Normandy, and Gascony as duke of Aquitaine. In 
both places factors operated to confine his actions within the bounds of feudal 
tradition. The Channel Islanders fortified their claims to local control of immemorial 
custom by alleged concessions from John. 166 In Gascony the opening 
of an avenue of recourse to the French King was an obstacle to a ducal 
manipulation of royal prerogative. Nevertheless, in both places, a body of precedent 
for extraordinary interventions by the overlord was built up in the 
course of the thirteenth century. 167 These interventions can hardly be explained 
as proceeding only from a free and liberal exercise of authority to 
redress defects of justice. There is involved here a confusion of capacities, a 
political manifestation of the property rule that an inferior title is drowned in 
the acquisition of a superior title. This is shown in sources of Henry Ill's reign 
in the accumulation of acts by the crown done on the basis of mere "grievous 
complaint" or for specific cause. Apart from any deliberate policy of acting like 
a king in situations where he could have been approached only as a duke, the 
merger must have been abetted by the employment of common administrative 
machinery and equally by the importunities of men with grievances. For these 
are, of all people, the least likely to weigh or be put off by nice legal distinctions 
respecting the capacities of the locus supplicandi. 
The impact of constant response to petitions of the most diverse sorts from 
all corners of the King's dominions is apparent in the concluding sentence of 
chapter 17 of the Statute of Westminster I. Here a new remedy had been laid 
out to deal with unlawful distresses. If these should be done in the Marches of 
186 J n f ra> p. j, of cases coram rege; in Gascony, by the use of 
167 E.g., in the Channel Islands by the transfer quo warranto.