In our earliest records we find some ecclesiastical foundations expressly distinguished as “free,” which would seem to imply a release from restrictions and obligations which were usually imposed, and a greater measure of independence of the tribe.[186] Thus in Sligo a large district was offered by its owners “to God and Patrick,” and we are told that the king, who seems to be acting as representative of the tribe, “made it free to God and Patrick.”[187] But it is impossible to determine what were the limits of this immunity. [Sidenote: TRIBAL INFLUENCE] The Church in the Roman Empire has been described as an _imperium in imperio_, and the typical ecclesiastical community in Ireland may be described as a tribe within a tribe. The abbot, or, where the dual system prevailed, his lay coadjutor, exercised over the lay folk settled on the lands of the community a control similar to that which the tribal king exercised over the tribe. But though the community was thus constituted as an independent body and formed a sort of tribe itself, not subject to the king, it was nevertheless bound by certain obligations to the tribe within whose borders it lay. We have seen that the right of eventual succession to the abbacy was often reserved to the tribe. But in general the monastery was bound not only to furnish the religious services which the tribe required, but to rear and educate without cost the offspring of any tribesman who chose to devote his son to a religious life.[188] The tribesman, on his part, was bound, when he had once consigned his child to the care of the monks, not to withdraw him, on pain of paying a forfeit.[189] A monastery might welcome novices from other tribes, if their parents chose to pay the cost of their education; its attachment by a closer bond to what might be called its lay tribe was expressed in this right of the tribesmen to a free training for an ecclesiastical career.