a religious house, governed by an abbot, where persons retire from the world, to spend their time in solitude and devotion. By the invention of masses for the living and the dead, dispensations, jubilees, indulgences, &c., the abbeys procured such large privileges, exemptions, and donations, that, when these houses were totally abolished in England by Henry VIII., to the number of 190, an yearly revenue of £2,853,000 reverted to the crown.