BARRING OUT, a practice formerly very common in schools, but now almost, if not altogether, abandoned. It consisted in the scholars taking possession of the school, and fastening the doors against the master,itt whose helplessness they scoffed from the win dows. The usual time for B. 0. was immediately prior to the, periodical vacation. It seems to have been an understood rule in B. 0, that if the scholars could sustain a siege against the master for threw days, they were entitled to dictate terms to him regarding the number of holidays, hours of recreation, etc., for the ensuing year. If. on the other hand, the master succeeded in forcing an entry before the expiry of that period, the insurgents were entirely at his mercy. The masters, in most cases, appear to have acquiesced Rod-hurnoredly in the custom; but some chafed at it, and exerted their strength and their ingenuity to storm or surprise the garrison. Addison is said to have been the chief actor in a B. 0. of the master of Lichfield. One remarkable and fatal case of B. 0. occurred at the high school, Edinburgh, in Sept., 1595. The scholars had to complain of an abridgment of their usual holidays by the town-council, who, on being remonstrated with, refused, even though the claim was supported by the master, to grant more than three of the eight days which the boys demanded as their privilege. They, accordingly, took advantage of the master's temporary absence
to lay in a store of provisions, and having done so, they barricaded the doors. The nanistrates, the patrons of the school, in vain sought admission, the boys saying they wad treat with their master only; and after a day and night had passed, it Was resolved to force an entrance. The result was, that One of them, Bailie Macmoran, was shot dead on the spot by a scholar named Sinclair. The scholars of Witten school, Cheshire, were directed by the statutes drawn up by the founder, Sir John Deane, to observe the practice: "To the end that the schollars have not any evil opinion of the schoolmaster, nor the schoolmaster should not mistake the schollars for requiring of customs and orders, I will that upon Thursdays and Saturdays: in the afternoons, and upon holy, days, they refresh themselves—and a week before Christmas and Easter, according to the old custom, they bar and keep forth the: school the schoolmaster, in such sort as other schonrs du in great schools." This school was founded in 1558. See Brand's Popular Ant:guitks, Chambers's Domestic Annals, and Carlisle's Endowed Grammar Schools.