that is, a transplantation of culture had taken place, and a great deal of effort 
was expended to keep this intact, a matter of especial concern being the 
integrity of the common law. Those who were governed by this law were 
surrounded by "hostiles," a depressed majority who lived by their own "lewd 
customs," 181 which, in spite of English contempt, possessed an attractive force 
sufficient to lure many of the conqueror race over the line into a sort of purgatory 
which lay between the heaven of English mores and the hell of the Irish 
way of life. These so-called debased Englishmen were a serious problem, for 
they were sui juris and so constituted a political threat to the principles of 
subjection which were the cornerstones of Anglican administration. 
We have already remarked upon the fact that during the thirteenth century, 
by direct royal mandate introducing English law or via the jurisdiction exercised 
by transfer or appeal, the crown kept the Anglo-Irish legal system 
under supervision. In the light of this long-sustained policy it seems improbable 
that when, under Edward I, parliaments were convened in Ireland, the 
initiative in law improvement was allowed to slip from the overlord's hands; 
since the crown could still ordain of its own motion, there is every reason to 
think that the word from above had as much to do with legislative output as 
the petition from below. This is not only to be inferred from the fact that an 
Irish Parliament will enact English statutes the enforcement of which had 
earlier been ordered by the crown 182 but is also more directly demonstrable 
from a 1310 request from Edward II for specific legislation, 183 and the later instructions 
of Edward 111 to William of Windsor (1375) - 184 Further to be noted 
are the representations to the crown made by Irish councils or parliaments concerning 
the state of the country to which royal responses were made article by 
article, 185 or which, as in 1368, resulted in the confection of ordinances for 
subsequent action by the Irish Parliament. 186 If legislative effect is to be attributed 
to such representations, it would appear that we have in rudimentary 
form a supervisory device similar to that employed for the control of American 
colonial enactment. There is a discernible parallel between the constitutional 
situation of Ireland and the later royal colonies, for in both cases a deputy 
181 This is Coke's rendition of the "malueis 
custume" of the Statute of Kilkenny (1366) 
{cf. Fourth Institute, 358). 
182 E.g., the statute of 1320 re St. Westminster 
I, St. Westminster 11, and St. of Gloucester (1 
Berry, op. cit., 281 et seq.). 
183 Ibid., 263. It is conceivable that the measures 
designed to prevent the debasement of the 
English, like that of 1297 with regard to tonsure 
and dress {ibid., 211) and the Statute of Kilkenny 
(1366) on the proper etiquette of riding 
{ibid., 435) were inspired from Westminster. 
184 1 Richardson and Sayles, Parliaments and 
Councils of Medieval Ireland (1943), 55. 
185 1 Berry, op. cit., 332 et seq. (1342). 
186 Ibid., 408; cf. also Cal. Close Rolls 1364-68, 
466. See also the representations of 1385 {ibid., 
484) (no legislation), and of 1421 {ibid., 562 
et seq.). In Richardson and Sayles, op. cit. supra 
n. 184, 19, are representations hitherto unpublished. 
Betham, Origin and History of the Constitution 
of England and of the Early Parliaments 
of Ireland (1834), 352 et seq., has a set 
of the year 1428.