Common law, on the other hand, owes its origins to the slow development of royal courts after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Gradually, the expansion of royal power at the expense of the local barons resulted in the ascendancy of royal institutions and particularly the royal courts, where citizens perceived the likelihood of justice at the hand of the King’s judges as greater than that of the purely local tribunals, which had existed before the conquest. The term common law owes its origins to the fact that it was the law applied by royal or national courts and hence “common” to the entire country as opposed to the customary law of the local courts.