Law, legislation, and consent in the Plantagenet Empire: Wales and Ireland, 1272–1461

In recent years, scholars have begun to look afresh at the dynamics of English “imperial” power in the late medieval period, but the extent to which the English dominions were subject to English law and legislation – and why and how these influences varied between the regions, and over an extended period of time – has been considered less systematically, and rarely comparatively. With its focus on Wales and Ireland this discussion explores the synergies and the strains which shaped attitudes towards the authority of the late medieval English crown and which, ultimately, determined the extent of England’s influence beyond its borders. It shows that these attitudes were often fundamentally conflicted and contradictory. It highlights the difficulties of the English crown in seeking to balance the elitist agenda of its English subjects, on the one hand, with its desire to bring the Welsh and Irish more squarely within the orbit of the English state system, on the other hand. It also highlights the often inconsistent attitudes within the dominions themselves, which veered between welcoming or resisting the interference of the English crown. The discussion emphasizes how interaction between the English crown and the people of its dominions was shaped above all by dialogue and negotiation.

England's right to dictate the laws adopted in these other lands of the archipelago. But some underlying questions resonate across the centuries: how was law to be made and who should have a say in its formulation; how far was Westminster to be seen as the principal hub of or separation from, England and its legal and political institutions? The set of issues raised by this final question in particular went far in shaping the complex interplay between center and periphery in the fourteenth century for, as this discussion will show, it would be wrong to assume that the extension of English influence beyond England's borders was received only with hostility. Balancing the advantages of self-determination, on the one hand, with the stability and order offered by incorporation within a much more powerful and resourceful state entity, on the other hand, lay at the heart of the dilemma faced by the peoples of the English dominions of the fourteenth century.
Two underlying points can be made from the outset. First, it needs to be stressed that the "Plantagenet Empire"-as historians have come to term the lands over which latemedieval English kings exercised power-was not some unwieldy, monolithic constitutional edifice imposed on England's weaker neighbors by sustained and systematic coercion. 3 It was, rather, formed by a dynamic and constantly changing set of relationships between center and periphery, and it drew its strength from the mutual interests that it served and from the diversity of its constituent parts. But within this arrangement England was still the dominant-and domineering-partner. The way that law and legislation extended beyond England's borders therefore invite reflection not only on how they were received but also on how they came to be projected. In this, the picture was as complicated and contradictory for the English as it was for the peoples of the dominions, for whilst there might have been a natural tendency to impose English institutions and political and legal cultures on the 3 For useful discussion of the term, see Peter Crooks, David Green, and W. Mark  outlying lands of the British Isles as an affirmation of the superiority of "the English way of doing things" and as a central plank of a "state-building" program, 4 this attitude was tempered by an equally compelling imperative to keep those who were not English at arm's length. For political and legal integration implied constitutional parity, and this was a privilege that very few Englishmen would readily have countenanced bestowing on peoples beyond England's borders. 5 What follows is an attempt to delineate these complex and contradictory agendas and to place them within broader questions about the consensual nature of English rule and the impact of English institutions beyond England's borders.
Second, the English crown's constitutional relationships with its dependencies varied significantly, which meant that the way law was used and the motives behind its extension from the center were correspondingly diverse. As this discussion is principally concerned with the projection and reception of English law and legislation, the focus is on Wales and Ireland, where English influence was most intensively sustained. Gascony and Scotland were also theoretically part of the Plantagenet Empire, but their ties with England were less strong.
The duchy of Gascony, though an English dependency since the mid-twelfth century, had remained for the most part impervious to English influence, retaining its own church and 4 See, in particular, Alan Harding, Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State (Oxford, 5 as they travelled the country. 8 The petitioners pointedly declared that "the bodies of the men of Galloway belong to the king [i.e., Edward I] and nobody else, so no great lord ought to make or shape any law for them that they have had not had and used since the aforesaid time [of King Alexander]." This was an assertion by Scotsmen of the supremacy of royal (English) law over the private (Scottish) law of local lords. It was a principle that even the greatest stalwart of Scottish independence, Robert Bruce, was ready to acknowledge in 1324 when he granted what he described as "English law" to the people of Galloway. 9 The cases of 1305 highlight how individual receptivity to law could be guided as much by local circumstances and hard-headed pragmatism as by an overarching sense of national or political affiliation.
Wales 8 PROME, Edward I, Roll 12, item 288 (276); Edward I, Petition 3, no. 71. For background, see William Croft Dickinson, "Surdit de Sergaunt," Scottish Historical Review 39, no. 128 (October, 1960): 170-75; and Hector L. MacQueen, "The Laws of Galloway: A Preliminary Survey," in Galloway: Land and Lordship, ed. Richard D. Oram and Geoffrey P. Stell (Edinburgh, 1991), 131-43. 9 Cf. G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1965), 418-19. For general discussion, see W. David H. Sellar, "The Common Law of Scotland and the Common Law of England," in The British Isles, 1100-1500: Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, ed. R. R. Davies (Edinburgh, 1988Hector L. MacQueen, Common Law and Feudal Society in Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1993), 5-26;Davies, First English Empire, 157-58, 160-61. 6 If Edward I made little headway in his attempt to subjugate Scotland permanently to the authority of the English crown, his fortunes were entirely different in Wales, where an initial punitive invasion in 1277 was followed by outright conquest and annexation of the Principality in 1282. The English king was now in a position to impose his will comprehensively on the Welsh people. But the picture was more complicated, for Edward did not regard the people of Wales as a conquered people but as his subjects. They owed him their loyalty and obedience, but he also had an obligation to offer them good lordship and fair and just rule. Thus, the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 (alternatively known as the Statute of Wales) was conceived not as an instrument of oppression but as an expression of the king's munificence: it enabled the people of Wales to benefit from the enlightened legal customs developed by the English, as Edward himself would no doubt have viewed the situation.
Some of the provisions of the Statute invoked for the Welsh the rights that Englishmen had long fought to establish for themselves, in particular, guarantees against the oppression of local officials. The Statute was written as though a charter-that is to say, it was granting rather than imposing the new legal system on the Welsh-and it employed a form of address that was reminiscent, perhaps deliberately so, of Magna Carta. 10 There is even evidence to suggest that the Welsh had some input into its terms. 11 Scholars have also pointed out that parts of the legislation introduced mechanisms that represented improvements to existing common-law practice in England. 12 It also, famously, made provision for the retention of 10 Paul Brand, "An English Legal Historian Looks at the Statute of Wales," Welsh Legal History Society 3 (2003): 20-56, at 26-27. 11 Ibid., 34-35. 12 Llinos Beverley Smith, "The Statute of Wales, 1284," Welsh History Review 10, no. 2 (December, 1980; Brand, "English Legal Historian," 48. 7 Welsh legal practices: while criminal law came to fall more squarely within the auspices of English common law practice, civil law matters continued to be determined overwhelmingly by reference to long-established Welsh custom. This showed that Edward was not uncompromisingly seeking to establish legal uniformity across his lands. Nor was he-now that the Principality was firmly under his control-intolerant of, or hostile to, local custom. 13 Compared to the native people of Ireland, the legal position and status of the Welsh was unquestionably superior. 14 Given this context, it should come as no surprise to find that the Statute of Rhuddlan was positively received by some sections of Welsh society. In 1321 the "liegemen of the three counties of Snowdon" (as they styled themselves) complained that the sheriffs of those parts had changed the Statute in several ways, illegally in their view, for they stated that no minister could do this other than the king himself, as was specified in the Statute. 15 They asked the king to "command your justice, sheriffs and other ministers of those parts that they be guided peaceably and according to the laws granted at Rothelan [i.e., Rhuddlan]." It is noticeable that the laws were said to have been granted at Rhuddlan, not imposed or forced upon the populace. A few years later, Ririd ap Carwet complained to the English king that he 13 This contrasted with the period before the conquest of 1282, for which see R. R. Davies, "Law and National Identity in Thirteenth-Century Wales," in Welsh Society and Nationhood: Historical Essays Presented to Glanmor Williams, ed. R. R. Davies, R. A. Griffiths, I. G. Jones, and K. O. Morgan (Cardiff, 1984), 51-69, at 59-68. 14  Statute. 19 And secondly, there was dissatisfaction in some quarters with the persistence of the Welsh custom of partible inheritance. 20 This had fallen within the body of Welsh law that the Statute of Rhuddlan sought to preserve. In 1305, the "community of Wales" petitioned the prince of Wales to ask that they be allowed to buy and sell lands freely, thus circumventing the restrictive nature of the traditional Welsh inheritance custom. 21 On this occasion the prince refused, on the grounds that such a concession was not contained in the Statute. Later, however, when he was king, and in the aftermath of a rebellion in Glamorgan early in 1316, Edward was moved to meet Welsh demands: an ordinance issued at the parliament held at Lincoln in February 1316 conceded that in North Wales the community would be able to buy and sell land without restriction, though this was to last for three years only. 22 A few years later, with Welsh custom reinstated once more, the "king's free tenants of north Wales" renewed their plea. 23 They stated that "they are greatly impoverished because they cannot sell their lands or give them according to the laws and customs of England, for if a gentleman of the country has a carucate of land and has five sons or more, the land will be divided up among them after the death of their father so . . . that they become each a beggar living on their parents, whereby their said parents feel greatly burdened and aggrieved." The king's response is significant: "The king does not feel himself advised to do away with the ancient customs of Wales." An English king was thus in the unlikely position of defending native Welsh custom in the face of Welsh demands to supplant these with English legal custom.
Historians have struggled to explain Edward's reluctance to concede to these demands, other than to suggest that it reflected the king's unbending faith in the terms of his father's settlement of the Principality and his desire to act as the "guardian of traditional interests." 24 R. R. Davies's suggestion that the king's response reflected cynical "profiteering selfinterest" is more plausible, since the desire of the Welsh to circumvent native legal practices provided a ready source of income to their powerful English lords, in the form of fines and licenses. 25 But it may also be that Edward was reluctant to make such a grant in the face of opposition from English colonists, especially those of the royal boroughs founded by Edward I, anxious to preserve their superior legal standing and wealth. 26 It is even possible that not all Welsh subscribed to the views expressed by the authors of these petitions.
In a period that is usually characterized as an age of precocious English expansion, the issue of participle inheritance in the Principality of Wales is an important reminder that English kings did not necessarily regard a multiplicity of legal custom in the lands under their control as incompatible with their claims to exercise overall sovereignty. It should be remembered that, even in England, the common law was not a universally applied legal code. Late-medieval English kings were sensitive to the dangers of imposing laws and customs on a hostile population: the relative weakness of the state apparatus meant that legal systems could only work if local communities were compliant. And who was to say that centralization and uniformity necessarily equated with strength and dominion? 28 In 1279, in a plea to preserve his authority and legal autonomy, the last native Welsh prince, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, wrote to Edward I and declared that "the fact that each province under the lord king's dominionthe Gascons in Gascony, the Scots in Scotland, the Irish in Ireland and the English in England-has its own laws and customs, according to the mode and usage of those parts in which they are situated, amplified rather than diminished the Crown." 29 A multiplicity of legal custom and law was perhaps much more the mark of "empire" than a single unitary legal system that bound all the people together.
Such a perspective might have helped English kings to tolerate the status of the Welsh Marches as independent territories in all aspects apart from the underlying sovereignty which belonged to the crown. A distinct, but ill-defined and extremely variable, body of March law Legal History Conference, 1977, ed. Alan Harding (London, 1977and Tim Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1480-1560(Woodbridge, 2000, 143-50. Westminster II (1285) in a dispute with the earls of Norfolk and Pembroke over a wardship pertaining to the lordship of Chepstow, the earls retorted that "the people of the parts of Wales do not use the laws and statutes of England." 32 Instead, they claimed the regalian right to determine what laws should run in their territories. In 1391, Richard, earl of Arundel had declared that he and his heirs, "reserve to themselves the right whenever and howsoever it pleases them to declare, to add to or reduce the . . . laws, customs and services of their lordship . . . for the security and convenience of themselves, their tenants and the aforesaid lands." 33 What gave this declaration special poignancy was the fact that the earl had lifted these words directly from the Statute of Rhuddlan. There could be no better illustration of the belief by a Marcher Lord that he was, in effect, king within his own domain.
The Statute of Rhuddlan was explicit in stating that the right and authority to make laws in the Principality of Wales belonged to the king. The same principle applied in the Welsh Marchers in respect to the authority of the Marcher lords. Thus, in general, no provision was made to allow the inhabitants of Wales a voice in shaping the laws which circumscribed their lives. By the end of the thirteenth century the majority of statutes were enacted by the English crown in parliament, so the king could claim with some justification that English laws had been enacted with the consent of the English people or at least their representatives who were present at parliament. But with the exception of two occasions under Edward II, representatives were never returned to the English parliament from Wales, and so the legislation that the English parliament generated, and that in theory applied as much to Wales as it did to England, could never claim to be representative of the views and interests of the broader Welsh populace. 34 It is unclear how much impact English legislation routinely made in Wales and even less so how the Welsh people felt about their disenfranchised position. References to the enactment of statutes in Wales are sparse. One exception is the Statute of Carlisle (1307), whose preamble specified that the legislation was intended to improve the king's "entire dominion," and that it was to be "observed in future in England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland." 35 The fact that in Wales, unlike in Ireland, there was no straightforward transplantation of English law and institutions might have meant that legislation--and especially statutes relating to legal matters--could not be easily transferred from an English to a Welsh context. Although in theory the Westminster courts had oversight of justice in Wales, very few cases were actually transferred there, and there is little evidence to show that Welshmen attempted to use the common-law courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas for their own ends. 36 In practice, therefore, England and Wales operated more or less independent legal systems, though it is to be noted that, like the inhabitants of the king's other dominions and legal franchises, the Welsh still exploited the opportunities that 16 existed to gain legal remedy and royal favor by appealing directly to the king. 37 That there is no evidence to suggest that the Welsh people craved the presence of representatives in the English parliament nevertheless suggests that the application of English statutes to the Principality, if this happened at all, was never strongly resented. The two occasions when Welsh MPs were returned to the English parliament-in 1322 and 1327-occurred entirely at the behest of the English crown and were intended to serve specific political (rather legislative, or fiscal) ends. 38 The absence of Welsh MPs in the English parliament raises a number of important questions about the constitutional status of Wales. Without contemporary comment on the matter, for an explanation we must look to broader political and cultural assumptions on the part of the English crown. First, when Wales had been conquered by Edward I, the land was not incorporated into the English kingdom but remained a separate entity, its inhabitants becoming subjects of the English king but quite distinct from the king's English subjects. 39 In 1284, Wales was said to have been "annexed and united to the crown of England," not to England itself. The reluctance of the English to extend the franchise to the inhabitants of Wales thus reflected a belief that the Westminster parliament was quintessentially an English institution and that only Englishmen should enjoy the privilege of participation in the English polity. 40 Secondly, English attitudes to a Welsh presence in parliament might have been different had there been the promise of a significant contribution by the inhabitants of Wales to English royal revenue; but Wales was extremely poor and its taxable potential was almost non-existent. 41 Since the presence of representatives in parliament was closely linked to their role as assenters to royal demands for subsidies, the absence of Welsh fiscal potential perspective of the Welsh, this was a good reason not to press too strongly for the franchise: with representation came financial burden.
Finally, the absence of Welsh parliamentary representatives reflected the very different political cultures, ideologies, and structures of the two lands. England was, for its time, a highly centralized, unified, and integrated state. As R. R. Davies put it, "[r]oyal authority within this kingdom was ubiquitous and, on its own terms, exclusive; taxes, justice, governance, coinage, and law were more or less universal; political power was ultimately court-centred; [and] a single assembly-the great council or parliament-represented a national, unitary conclave of the political nation with its king." 42 The county gentry and urban oligarchies of England were fully assimilated into this polity, and their outlook was governed by a respect for the law, the preservation of social hierarchy, and wealth accumulation. Welsh society, on the other hand, while undergoing a rapid process of Anglicization following the conquest, retained many of the characteristics of its pre-conquest existence. 43 It also remained fundamentally "foreign" to the English observer 44 and "colonial" in its organization. 45  essence, the English parliament was a product of the English socio-political and economic system and could not easily be projected into other lands. Wales was not permanently represented in the English parliament until 1542, following the first formal act of union with England in 1536. 46 From the English point of view this was an act of benevolence, for it enabled the Welsh to "grow and rise to more wealth and prosperity." 47 But it also brought Wales for the first time into the orbit of regular demands for taxation. 48 lieges there." 54 Their particular anxiety lay in the crown's apparent willingness to grant Welshmen denizenship "to the intent that they might be of the same freedom and liberty as Englishmen are there"-that is, to have the same access to legal recourse as Englishmen.
Such a state of affairs, they asserted, would "in a short time lead to the utter destruction of all Englishmen dwelling in the said towns and in the land there; for they [the Welsh] should partake in juries and trials of the persons and livelihoods of those toward whom they have no favor, but for whom they have great hatred in heart, countenance and word." Welsh gentry with opportunities to serve the crown and to govern on its behalf as a first step toward Anglicization. 58

Ireland
As in Wales, it was not so much royal policy as strong lobbying from the English settler community that prevented the wholesale extension of English law to the indigenous Irish population. There was a deep-running fissure within Irish society between the English on the one hand, who jealously guarded access to the common law as a means of preserving their English identity, and the Irish on the other hand, who were denied access to the common law and who were seriously disadvantaged as a result. 59 The Irish welcomed the protection that they felt the English common law offered. Like the Welsh, they did not lean toward English common law because they felt that it was an inherently superior legal system but because those who had access to its benefits (i.e., the English settlers) enjoyed significant advantages over those who did not. In 1277 the Irish were represented by a small group of senior clerics who offered to purchase access to the common law at a price of 8,000 marks. 60 Edward I was keen to accede to the Irish request, 61 as was his grandson Edward III, who in 1331 went so far as to grant English law, in theory, to all free Irishmen. 62 Edward III might have been persuaded by the strength of the arguments put forward by the mayors, bailiffs, and communities of the cities of Ireland who complained to the justiciar of Ireland and the king's council of the confusion caused by the existence of "three kinds of law"-common law, Irish law, and marcher law-before reflecting that "it seems to us that where there is diversity of law the people cannot be of one law or one community." 63 Their allusion to disunity was a powerful argument and on the face of it a surprising one to emanate from this quarter, given the general hostility that existed among the colonists toward the Irish. 64 Theoretically the lordship of the king of England extended across the whole of the land of Ireland, and the native Irish were as much his subjects as the English settler population. But the exclusion of the Irish from the king's justice fundamentally undermined this principle for, as James Lydon has put it, access to the common law was "the very badge of being a subject and the means by which a subject got from the king the protection to which he was entitled." 65 Exclusion from the common law fueled resentment among the Irish, and it gave them little incentive to recognize the authority of the king of England. This, in turn, generated much of the disorder and instability that blighted the land throughout the period. In the 1390s Richard II came closest to addressing these issues when a demonstration of English military might persuaded Irish chieftains that their interests lay in coming to terms. They accordingly swore oaths of allegiance and performed acts of homage in return for access to English law. 66 But the settlement did not last, because of Richard's downfall and the lack of cooperation among the English in Ireland. 67 In 1280 Edward I wrote to the English community, stating that he did not wish to accede to Irish requests to purchase access to the common law without their consent, which, as it turned out, they appeared unwilling to give. 68 Many Irish men and women gained access to the English common law by individual charter, usually purchased at a high price, but it never became a universally applicable legal code for the Irish population as a whole. 69 Nevertheless, unlike Wales, in Ireland English influence took on a territorial dimension that allowed institutions of government and law to emerge. Whereas in Wales the English were confined to small and isolated communities (i.e., "Englishries") surrounded by the indigenous population, in Ireland English settlers had come to dominate the eastern and southern parts of the island, with Dublin functioning as the principal administrative center.  Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 62 (1961-1963CCR, 1296CCR, -1302. In fact, discontent in Ireland with the use of procedure by bill preceded Wogan's appointment as justiciar. G. O. Sayles, ed., Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under Edward II, 4:74 (London, 1957): lxxxi and n. 2. 74 In 1305, the justiciar's court ruled that the king (i.e., Edward I) "had not yet granted to the men of this land [i.e., Ireland] the liberties contained in the Great Charter." James Mills, ed., Rolls, Ireland: 1305-1307(Dublin, 1914, 158.

Calendar of Justiciary
representatives were attending the English parliament for the same reasons. 75 The Irish parliament served an important legislative function. In a landmark assembly that met in Dublin in the spring of 1297 representatives were called to attend with full power (plena potestas) to bind the community not to a grant of taxation (as was usually the case when such a clause was stipulated) but to a whole raft of legislation designed to curb the lawlessness of the lordship. The principle appears to have held on a number of later occasions when important legislation was enacted. 76 The Irish parliament thus ensured that a measure of consensus was built into key aspects of the lordship's governance. It also helped shape a political community that coalesced around matters of particular local concern and common interest. Perhaps the most pressing of these was safeguarding the community from the threat of the Irish. All except one of the twelve statutes passed by the Dublin parliament in 1297 focused on the problem of the defense of the lordship. 77 Also of concern to the settler community was the issue of Irish "contamination." One of the 1297 statutes forbade Englishmen from adopting Irish hairstyles in case they were accidentally mistaken for Irishmen and killed. Englishmen who went "native" risked foregoing the right to sue at  (Philadelphia, 1952), 69-70, 76-78. 76 Representatives were present in the parliament of 1320, 1324, two Great Councils of 1351 and the parliament at Kilkenny in 1366 when major legislation was enacted. Richardson and Sayles,Irish Parliament,77;Statutes and Ordinances,[306][307][308][309] Cormac Ó. Cléirigh, "The Problems of Defence: A Regional Case-Study," in Lydon, Law and Disorder, 25-56. The texts of the statutes are printed in Lydon,Law and Disorder, Later, fears about the gaelicization of the English community reached their apogee in the Statute of Kilkenny in 1366. This envisaged a strict racial division between the Irish and English communities, forbidding Englishman from making any sort of alliance with the Irish "by marriage, gossip, fostering of children, concubinage or by armour" and insisting that the English population spoke English, used English names, and adopted English modes of riding and apparel. 79 Significantly, it was felt necessary to specify that, in disputes among the English in the lordship, the common law was to be used and "that no English be governed  Scotland and Wales, 1066-1500," in England in Europe, 1066-1453, ed. Nigel Saul (London, 1994, 121-32; Brendan Smith, "Lordship in the British Isles, c.1320c.1360: The Ebb Tide of the English Empire?," in Pryce and Watts, eds., Power and Identity, 153-63.

Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages
tribunal." 82 In some respects the two institutions did work in parallel. The English parliament had no power to grant taxation on behalf of the English in Ireland. Nor did the English parliament exercise appellate jurisdiction over the Irish parliament: judgments made in the Irish context were very rarely subject to parliamentary review in England. 83 In other respects, however, the shadow of the English parliament loomed large over the lordship. The inhabitants of the colony regularly bypassed the Irish institution and presented petitions directly to the English parliament. 84 This was because the king's presence in the English parliament conferred a jurisdictional omnipotence upon that assembly that could not be equaled elsewhere. More significant for the present purposes, the Irish parliament, though capable in its own right of legislating on the needs of the lordship, also regularly found itself in the position of giving approval to legislation that had been generated in England. This legislation came in two kinds.  , 190-95. 86 Ibid., 293-95. 87 Ibid., 310-13. 88 Ibid., 314-21. 89 Ibid., 322-29;and Robin Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318-1361(Oxford, 1982), 196-97. 90 CCR, 1333 94 Statutes and Ordinances,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][101][102][103] It would be easy to characterize this transmission of English legislation as the mark of English dominion over a colonial territory, but in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries the creation of new law was not conceived in this way. The projection of English legislation was an expression of the king's obligation to his subjects to provide good governance and justice. Like the Statute of Rhuddlan, the English statutes transferred into an Irish context were regarded as serving the needs of the people living there rather than the inhabitants or government of England. When Edward II sent the Statute of Winchester to Ireland in 1308, to help restore law and order in the land, the preamble stated that he did so "because we are hereto bound by the bond of an oath." 95 That oath was the coronation oath, in which the king swore to protect all his subjects and serve their interests.
Nor do these statutes have anything significant to say about the respective powers or standing of the Westminster and Dublin parliaments, since, for the most part, they emanated from the initiative of the king and his senior judges and councilors. They were therefore expressions of royal rather than of parliamentary authority. It is true that the majority received formal assent in the English parliament, but in reality the king's English subjects of England had no more input into their formulation than his English subjects of Ireland. Thus, the statutes did not expose inequality between England and Ireland or between the parliamentary institutions of the two lands. On the contrary, they underlined the homogenous nature of royal authority and the constitutional equivalence of the king's English subjects of England and Ireland. This, however, was to change as the fourteenth century progressed, and In the absence of a comprehensive contemporary record of the legislation promulgated in Ireland it is difficult to judge how much of the legislative output of the English parliament continued to be sent across the Irish Sea. In the first years of Edward III's reign, however, there is evidence to show that transmission was common. 96 At the end of the long lists of statutes made in the parliaments of January 1327, April 1328, November 1330, and September 1331 it was specified that the legislation was to be sent to Ireland for observance there. 97 What makes these statutes noteworthy is that they had for the most part been prompted not by the king and his council but by the MPs in parliament, through presentation of their common petitions. 98 This raised a difficult point of constitutional principle, for whereas previously English statutes might readily have been accepted by the English settlers in Ireland as diktats from the king, now these settlers was expected to adhere to a legislative agenda set by the wider English political community: in effect, the gentry and townsmen of Ireland were now to be presented with statutes that had been prompted by the gentry and townsmen of England, from whom the MPs of the English parliament were drawn.
It also raised a more practical issue, in that the legislation produced in England began to reflect the more narrow Anglo-centric interests of the local communities who sent MPs to 96 See Richardson and Sayles,Irish Parliament, Statutes of the Realm, 98 PROME, parliament of January 1327, C 65/1. Lists of common petitions for the remaining assemblies no longer exist, though it is highly likely that they were presented: see remained, for it was axiomatic that expressions of the royal will, which these examples embodied, expressed the common interest of the king's subjects whoever they were and wherever they resided.
The final element in this changing political environment was the English political community in Ireland, for as the fourteenth century progressed that community developed a much sharper sense of its own constitutional independence. Famously, in 1341, its members refused outright to comply with Edward III's decision to revoke all grants of lands and liberties made there since 1307. 108 In the session of parliament that met at Kilkenny in November 1341 the indignation of the community was expressed in a set of petitions that laid the blame for the lordship's woes squarely in the hands of the incompetent and inefficient royal ministers running the administration. 109 Protesting their loyalty to the king, the petitioners nevertheless stated that such a policy "seems to your said lieges contrary to right." 110 And they won their case: in April 1342, Edward III retreated from his earlier position, having restored the lands which had been taken into royal custody, and sacked the ministers who had been responsible for introducing his unpopular policies the previous year.
Some decades later, in the mid-1370s, the issue hinged on taxation: on three occasions in 1375 Edward III summoned representatives from Ireland to convene before him with the view to granting taxation. The English of Ireland flatly refused on two occasions and on the third occasion delegates were sent but without the power to bind the community to 108 Frame, English Lordship, 242-61. 109 Statutes and Ordinances, 332-63. 110 CCR, 1341-3, 508-16;Statutes and Ordinances, 345. taxation. 111 The community resisted the royal commands on the grounds that, "according to the rights, privileges, liberties, laws and customs of the land of Ireland, since the time of the Conquest and before, they are not bound to send anyone from the aforesaid land to parliaments or councils to be held in England." 112 It was an extraordinary assertion of the principle that the English of England and the English of Ireland operated within separate political spheres and that the rights of the English in Ireland took precedence over the royal prerogative.
A few years later, the "prelates and clergy of Ireland" presented a petition to the Westminster parliament of 1381 asking for the repeal of the "statute" of absentees made in the assembly of January 1380. 113 They stated that the statute allowed the king to take two thirds of the value of the benefices of men who had not secured a license to be absent from Ireland but also (and more important for our purposes) that the statute was one "to which they 111 The episode has been discussed most recently by Peter Crooks, "Negotiating Authority in did not assent as they were not summoned to the parliament." This was the first occasion that representation and legislation had been linked directly. In the fifteenth century, the principle was to gain more explicit articulation on both sides of the Irish Sea: in 1441 Chief Justice Fortescue upheld the point that "the land of Ireland is separate from the kingdom of England .
. . and if a statute be made here [in England] it shall not bind those in Ireland unless they approve it in their own parliament, even though the king under his great seal shall send this same statute to Ireland." 114 In the celebrated Dublin parliament of 1460, the English political community declared that the "land of Ireland is, and at all times has been, corporate of itself ... freed of the burden of any special law of the realm of England" except those agreed to in the Irish council or parliament. 115 If the significance of the Irish colony's quasi-declaration of independence in 1460 is diminished by the fact that the sentiments were in part driven by the political agenda of Richard, duke of York, 116 they nonetheless appear to have been reflective of broader views 114 M. Hemmant, ed., Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber before All the Justices of England, 1377England, -1461England, , 51 (1933 It is significant that Cornwalshe felt it necessary to justify to the chancellor the underlying probity of his recourse to English justice, even though the whole thrust of his argument was that Griffin had seized his office and goods in violation of the king's writ, issued under the great seal of England. It becomes clear why Cornwalshe was anxious to affirm this principle when we consider the contents of a document that recorded the arguments made by Griffin in 121 CCR, 1441-47, 104. 122 CPR, 1441  We do not know how much truth there is in Cornwalshe's allegations, but it is not hard to imagine that Griffin's defense of his actions involved upholding the right of the government in Ireland to run its affairs without interference from across the Irish Sea. Ironically, Cornwalshe had been in exactly the same position as Griffin three years previously, when he had become chief baron of the exchequer at the behest of the earl of Ormond in the face of contrary instructions from Westminster. So we should not necessarily see his arguments, or those advanced by Griffin, as entrenched ideological positions. Instead, they were expedients that suited the protagonists' circumstances and that took advantage of the blurred lines of authority that now existed between England and Ireland. In this instance, as we have seen, Griffin's patron Talbot simply ignored the writs issued in response to Cornwalshe's bill.
Eventually, in January 1447, Griffin was removed from office on the grounds that he had obtained it surreptusement et illoialment from the Irish chancery. 125 Significantly, this was done not by process from England but as a result of proceedings in the Irish parliament held at Trim. Griffin was subsequently brought before the King's Bench in Ireland to answer the accusations against him.

Conclusions
From both the perspective of the crown and the perspective of its "Anglo-Irish" and Welsh subjects, the question of how far the dominions should be integrated into the English polity exposed a confused and contradictory set of priorities. From the colonies' point of view, rule from Westminster offered peace and security, yet this was tempered by a desire to preserve local custom and a measure of self-determination. Attitudes to the "English" system of law were generally positive. This was because it was not in itself a tool of aggressive imperial rule: it could be adopted and adapted to fit local conditions (Scotland), or in the case of the Welsh and Irish it offered individuals security, status, and protection. It was pragmatism rather than national sentiment or an acceptance of servitude that shaped attitudes toward this English export. From the crown's point of view, the extension of its power into the dominions was self-evidently an attractive proposition, but this could not be achieved without a level of investment of money and energy which no late-medieval English king was willing to expend: there were limits beyond which integration and centralization became impracticable and unattractive. 126 When English legislation was projected into the dominions, this was not to serve imperial ambition, as such, but to fulfill the king's obligation to provide justice and good governance to all his subjects. Even so, with the exception of Richard II, 126 Crooks, "State of the Union," 13-16; Seymour Phillips, "Royal Authority and Its Limits: The Dominions of the English Crown in the Early Fourteenth Century," in Ní Ghrádaigh and O'Byrne, March in the Islands, 251-60, at 257-58.
community was more directly subject to English law, governance, and legislation; yet at the same time it was permitted to develop its own English-style administration, including a parliament. This ensured commonalty of experience, but over time it fostered a greater sense of the political distinctiveness and cohesion of the English colony, which in turn gave its inhabitants a strong collective and independent political voice. No such privileges were extended to Wales because the Welsh, as "foreign" subjects, remained outside the privileged orbit of the English polity. This meant that, although the Welsh found themselves at a distinct disadvantage in their dealings with English settler communities in Wales, direct interference by the crown in Welsh affairs was minimal, as was the consolidation of the Welsh people into a distinct Welsh polity: there was no Welsh equivalent of the Irish parliament to help to generate a unified political identity. 129 The absence of a developed English-style administrative structure in Wales thus emphasized the separation of the land from England and reinforced the antipathy of the English to the Welsh as Anglo-Welsh relations deteriorated in the fifteenth century. What created the conditions for separation in the medieval period may, ironically, have been an important factor in paving the way to eventual union between England and Wales, for the absence of a strong Welsh administrative tradition created the circumstances that allowed Wales to be subsumed without significant difficulty, and without serious opposition, into the English polity in the sixteenth century.
These patterns of institutional development find resonance with broader observations about the growth of English political identity in the fourteenth century. Ralph Griffiths has shown that in this time English subject-hood gradually came to apply to only those of English blood or descent; all other peoples, including the native Irish and Welsh, were considered to 129 With the exception of the period of Owain Glyn Dŵr's revolt, for which see Davies, Dŵr, Under Edward II, Welsh MPs were twice returned to the assembly. In these years the English parliament could truly be said to have been international in outlook.

Revolt of Owain Glyn
But by the second half of the fourteenth century, English legislation was mostly restricted in its application to England, "foreign" petitions had almost completely dried up, and the idea of extending the franchise beyond England's borders, even exceptionally, was never seriously considered. The period also witnessed a growing reluctance on the part of the English political community to allow the proceeds of parliamentary taxation to be spent on the defense of anywhere except England itself. 135 The English parliament had thus become predominantly national, even parochial, in its outlook. 136 Whereas in the early-fourteenth century it had served the interests of many different nationalities, by the fifteenth century it was overwhelmingly oriented toward England. Insofar as the assembly affected the crown's non-English subjects, this was mostly confined to protecting English interests abroad and ensuring that "foreigners" living in England did not enjoy any undue advantages. 137 This shift in focus has many explanations, but one of the most important lies in the way the English parliament came to be defined more clearly as an English institution by the English representatives who attended it. Parliament-and the law and legislation that it producedthus had the capacity either to consolidate or to undermine "imperial" power. The assembly could be used either to emphasize or to negate common identity and an integrated polity. As the institution came to be more and more swayed by the views of the broader political 134 Davies,First English Empire,[24][25]"English State,[204][205] Though see Edmund Curtiss, Richard II in Ireland (Oxford, 1927), 58-59. 137 For anti-alien common petitions see, for example, PROME, parliament of 1433, items 46, 51, and 52. 48 community of England the vision of pan-British and Irish unity gave way to political differentiation and English insularity.