Barring out

If the master's attempts to re-enter were successful, extra tasks were inflicted as a penalty, and willingly performed by the boys.

Dr. Samuel Johnson reports a story that Joseph Addison, when a schoolboy, was the ringleader of a barring out at his school.

[4] The custom extended to some early American Colonial schools, such as William and Mary College in Virginia, where students barred out Dr. James Blair and shot at him with pistols when he attempted to enter.

[5][6] According to David Hackett Fischer, the custom became common in the southern highlands and the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, though occasionally taking place elsewhere in the colonies.

[7] Barring out continued in Falstone, a village in Northumberland, until 1940 when the headmaster William Moody, who was unaware of the custom, demanded entrance to his school and the students eventually relented and let him enter.