Besides this great distinction between the free and the unfree, the free members of the tribe contained within themselves one distinction which must have always existed among them, and the germs of others which became gradually more prominent as the operation of the causes which led to them more and more influenced the constitution of the tribe. That combination which produced the tribe must from the beginning have had leaders and other necessary office-bearers; some one among them must have had supreme authority as judge in time of peace, and the tribe must have had a competent leader in time of war. Such functionaries were necessary as bonds of union; without them the tribe could not have been kept together in anything like social union; and as the tie which bound the free members of the tribe together was the belief in a common origin—a common descent from a mythic _eponymus_ from whom the tribe took its name—so the _Ri_ or king, who was at the head of the tribe, held that position not merely by election but as the representative in the senior line of the common ancestor, and had a hereditary claim to their obedience. As the supreme authority and judge of the tribe he was the _Ri_ or king. This was his primary function. Thus we are told that ‘it is lawful for a king to have a judge _though he himself is a judge_.’[162] As the leader in war he was the _Toisech_ or Captain, and bore the one or the other title as either function became most prominent, while in some cases these functions might be separated and held by different functionaries. Although the _Ri_ or king derived his authority from his claim to be the senior representative of the common ancestor, the office was still, from the necessity of being filled by a properly qualified person, to a certain extent elective. It was hereditary in a certain family, but elective among the members of that family; and an additional safeguard against the tribe being left without a proper head was provided by another member of the family being elected _Tanaist_ or successor to the _Ri_ or king in the event of his death. That the hereditary character of this office existed from primitive times is apparent from this, that a somewhat similar law of succession prevailed in the early Irish Church, the abbot or head of the monastery being chosen from a particular family; and while the influence of the Church may have confirmed, if it did not establish, a strict descent in the male line in the tribe,[163] a hereditary succession in the Church must have been derived from the close connection which had been formed between the Church and the tribe, and from the influence of the tribe upon the Church and not of the Church upon the tribe. While the whole of the land was still the common property of the tribe, the _Ri_ or king had no separate possession of land, but in this respect was on an equality with the free members of the tribe, and entitled only to the