2. In this discussion we are concerned with pleading in the royal courts. It should be noted that at the time of the Norman Conquest (1066) and for a century or more afterward the ordinary recourse of suitors was not to the royal courts but to local, or communal, courts and to feudal courts in which a lord heard cases involving his tenants. The royal courts existed primarily to try offenses against the king’s laws and to hear cases involving his tenants-inchief, which came before the king in his capacity as a feudal lord. Gradually, however, these royal courts began to absorb business from the communal and feudal courts.