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.
Colonial American bastardy laws
During the seventeenth century, when settlers started establishing permanent settlements in North America, decisions concerning how the new legal system would work needed to be decided. The people who established the New England colonies came to the new world so that they could create a new society that fashioned itself on the rules and teachings of their religion. The Puritans who founded the colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts created many rules that had basis in the Puritan faith. However, differences occurred within each colony as to the application of the law. For example, laws created in Massachusetts or Connecticut differed from laws created in Pennsylvania. Some of the differences in the rules within colonies came from the fact that different groups with different ideological backgrounds founded each colony. The Puritans founded the New England colonies, while the Quakers led by William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania. Due to the strong religious background of these colonies, colonists sought changes and improvements to the English common law. In many situations, the colonists would use a particular aspect of common law to build the foundation of a legal principle, but the details, such as the wording, implementation, and enforcement of said law fell to the colonists. The colonists did not want a carbon copy of English common law, as many of them left England and Europe in dispute of those laws, nor did the colonists decide upon a single, unified set of laws to govern the colonies as a large group. The colonies sought the means to create a legal system that looked out for each individual colony’s interests. If English common law coincided with what the colonists wanted, then the law remained unaltered. However, if the common law did not represent all of what the colonists wanted, they sought the freedom to change laws to something that best suited them.