11 Keith Thomas has mapped the incidence of barring out, and concludes that “the ninety or so schools for which I have so far collected definite evidence of the ritual are all situated north of the line from the Severn to the Wash, which marks so many fateful divisions in English history. Instances occur in almost every English county above that boundary, with a particularly heavy concentration in what is now called Cumbria, but never outside the North and the midlands”; Rule and Misrule in the Schools of Early Modern England (Reading, 1976), 30; and conversation with the author.
Whitehead observed that barring out occurred in most Cumberland villages; “the master, who always expected the barring out at the proper time, used to adjourn to the village ale-house, & treat the biggest boys to mulled ale, for in the winter season plenty of big fellows 18–20 years in age attend school”; see Talks about Brampton (Selkirk, 1907), 171-72.
Rollinson describes barring out in Westmorland as a “good natured, … school riot.” Most lasted “a day and a night and the next [day] till one in the afternoon.” But the custom of Brampton was a three-day barring out; see Life and Tradition in the Lake District, 60.
In the north of Ireland, barring out was also very common. “Within memory,” writes an historian of Carrickfergus, “it was common with boys to assemble early at their school-house on the morning before Christmas, and to bar out the master, who was not admitted till he promised a certain number of days’ vacation. Early on Christmas day, the boys set out to the country in parties of eight or twelve, armed with staves and bludgeons, killing and carrying off such fowl as came in their way. They were taken to their respective school-rooms, and dressed the following day. To this feast many persons were invited, who furnished liquors, or other necessaries; the entertainment usually continued for several days.” Parton, Andrew Jackson, I, 44.
12 Barring out occurred in the grammar school at Williamsburg in 1702 and again in 1705; Commissary James Blair wrote that Lt. Gov. Francis Nicholson was “the author and contriver of this business.” Nicholson was a Yorkshireman, who came from the north of England where this custom was very common. The documents are brought together in Edgar W. Knight, ed., A Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860 (5 vols., Chapel Hill, 1949), I, 474-88.
13 The classical description appears in Edward Eggleston, Hoosier School-master (1872, rpt. New York, 1957), 73-74; also idem, Transit of Civilization, 270; for other accounts see H. M. Brackinridge, Recollections of Persons and Places in the West (Philadelphia, 1834), and J. P. Wick-ersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania (Lancaster, 1886), 207.