Note 16 — THE BARRING OUT OR, PARTY SPIRIT
Reading edition · Edition 2
This custom of 'Barring Out' was very general (especially in the northern parts of England) during the 17th and 18th centuries, and it has been fully described by Brand and other antiquarian writers.
Dr. Johnson mentions that Addison, while under the tuition of Mr. Shaw, master of the Lichfield Grammar School, led, and successfully conducted, 'a plan for barring out his master. A disorderly privilege,' says the doctor, 'which, in his time, prevailed in the principal seminaries of education.'
In the Gentleman's Magazine of 1828, Dr. P. A. Nuttall, under the signature of P. A. N., has given a spirited sketch of a 'Barring Out' at the Ormskirk Grammar School, which has since been republished at length (though without acknowledgment) by Sir Henry Ellis, in Bonn's recent edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities. This operation took place early in the present century, and is interesting from its being, perhaps, the last attempt on record, and also from the circumstance of the writer himself having been one of the juvenile leaders in the daring adventure, 'quorum pars magna fuit.'—Ed.