Benedictine abbey in Forfarshire, on the east coast of Scotland, founded, 1178, by King William the Lion. There remain extensive ruins of a 13th-century church and other buildings of the monastery. The monks constructed a harbor and placed the bell on Inchcape Rock, a dangerous reef in the North Sea 12 miles southeast of the abbey, the subject of Southey's ballad. Of the 32 mitered abbots the last was Cardinal Beaton.