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from those of an inferior order, were called Abbots -sovereignand Abbots-general; and the heads of those Priories whohad become exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop,took upon themselves the dignity of Lords-Priors.

On the dissolution of the Abbies and Monasteries by Hen .VIII, the title of Abbot was no longer permitted, with theexception of that of Hulm, in Norfolk , the Abbot of whichMonastery being made by Henry, Bishop of Norwich , was

by virtue of a private Act of Parliament, continued as Abbot of Hulm, and permitted to entertain a Prior and twelvemonks ; accordingly Montague, Bishop of Norwich , justbefore the grand rebellion, wrote himself in his leases,Richard, by divine permission, Lord Bishop of Norwich , andLord Abbot of St. Bennets de Hulm, and which title it is saidmay still be assumed by the Bishops of Norwich.

ABDICATION . Dioclesian , the Roman Emperor, firstacquired the glory of giving to the world the example of amonarch abdicating his crown, which ceremony took placeon the 1st of May, A. D. 305. He afterwards retired to hiscountry seat in the neighbourhood of Salona, and died in 313.Several of the Saxon Kings, during the Heptarchy, abdicatedor resigned their thrones to assume the monastic habit, andrepaired to Rome , that they might receive the tonsure fromthe Pope ’s hands. James II . was declared by the British Par­ liament to have abdicated his crown in 1688.

ABLUTION. The antiquity of ablutions, as a religiousceremony, is equal to any recorded. Moses enjoined them ;the Heathens adopted them, and they have been continued byMahomet and his followers. The Egyptian priests had theirdiurnal and nocturnal ablutions. The Indians purified them-selves in the sacred stream of the Ganges . The Grecianshad their sprinklings, and the Romans their lustrations andlavations ; the ancient Christians had their ablutions before