Common law
The common lawso named because it was "common" to all the king's courts across Englandoriginated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066. Prior to the Norman Conquest, much of England's legal business took place in the local folk courts of its various shires and hundreds. A variety of other individual courts also existed across the land: urban boroughs and merchant fairs held their own courts, as did the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and large landholders also held their own manorial and seigniorial courts as needed. Additionally, the Catholic Church operated its own court system that adjudicated issues of canon law.
Admiralty law
Common law legal systems of Britain and the United States are in contrast to civil law legal systems which prevail in continental Europe and trace back to old Roman codified law. Although England's admiralty law was a development of continental civil law, its admiralty courts were common law courts, albeit somewhat distanced from the mainstream Kings Bench.