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 cerning Mrs. Barry one alone merits mention. In consequence of a quarrel with Mrs. Boutell for the possession of a veil, Mrs. Barry, as Roxana in the ‘Rival Queens’ of Nathaniel Lee, while uttering the words, ‘Die, sorceress, die! and all my wrongs die with thee,’ used her stage dagger with such effect as slightly to wound her rival through all her panoply. The matter was hushed up, and the explanation that the assailant had been carried away by her part was accepted. The letters of Rochester to ‘Madame B.,’ first printed in Tonson's edition of his works, 1716, are supposed to have been written to Mrs. Barry. In one of these reference is made to a child he had by her, on whom he is said afterwards to have settled by will an annuity of 40l. The few mad letters of Otway, preserved in the collection of his works, are also stated to have been addressed to her. The child of Lord Rochester, and a second, the paternity of which was acknowledged by Etherege, who also is said to have made provision for his offspring, both died before their mother. In 1709–10 Mrs. Barry disappeared from the stage, having retired to Acton, then a country village, where she died.

In Acton church there is a tablet with the inscription: ‘Near this place lies the body of Elizabeth Barry, of the parish of St. Mary-le-Savoy, who departed this life 7 Nov. 1713, aged 55 years.’ Cibber says: ‘She dy'd of a fever towards the latter years of Queen Anne.’ Davies states, on the authority of an actress who, at the time of Mrs. Barry's death, was in London, that ‘her death was owing to the bite of a favourite lapdog, who, unknown to her, had been seized with madness.’

[In addition to authorities cited see Genest's Account of the English Stage; Baker, Reed, and Jones's Biographia Dramatica; and Bellchambers's notes to his edition of Cibber's Apology, 1822.]  BARRY, GEORGE (1748–1805), author of a ‘History of the Orkney Islands,’ was a native of Berwickshire, and was born in 1748. He studied at the university of Edinburgh. After receiving license as a preacher from the Edinburgh presbytery of the church of Scotland, he continued to act as tutor in a gentleman's family until in 1782 he obtained a presentation to the second charge of Kirkwall. The dislike of a portion of the congregation to his preaching resulted before long in the formation of a Secession congregation in the parish. In 1793 he was translated to Shapinshay. He received in 1804 the degree of D.D. from the university of Edinburgh. Shortly before his death at Shapinshay on 11 May 1805 he published a ‘History of the Orkney Islands, including a view of the ancient and modern inhabitants, their monuments of antiquity, their natural history, the present state of their agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, and the means of their improvement.’ A second edition, with additions and improvements by the Rev. James Headrick, appeared in 1808. Barry's ‘History’ displays much diligent research and careful individual observation, notwithstanding the fact that he had access to the valuable manuscripts of Low, who had died without being able to find for them a publisher. Barry never sought to conceal his possession of Low's manuscripts; he refers in his ‘History’ to Low's ‘Tour,’ and possibly would have more fully acknowledged his obligations to him had he not been attacked by his last illness while the ‘History’ was passing through the press.

[Scott's Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, iii. 379, 418; Introduction by Dr. William Elford Leach to Low's Fauna Orcadensis (1813), and by Joseph Anderson to Low's Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Shetland in 1774 (1879).]  BARRY, GERAT or GERALD (fl. 1624–1642), colonel in the Spanish army and military writer, was a member of an Irish family, of which the Earls of Barrymore and Viscounts Buttevant were regarded as the heads. Barry was born in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and in his early years entered the service of the King of Spain. He was employed for a time in the Spanish fleet, and subsequently in the army of Spain in the Low Countries and Germany. Under Ambrosio Spinola, Barry distinguished himself at the siege of Breda in 1625. Of this remarkable siege an account written by Barry in English, illustrated with plates, and dedicated to Spinola, was published at Louvain in 1628, in folio. Barry was also author of another folio volume, printed at Brussels in 1634, with the following title: ‘A Discourse of Military Discipline devided into three boockes, declaringe the partes and sufficiencie ordained in a private souldier, and in each officer servinge in the infantery till the election and office of the captaine generall; and the laste booke treatinge of fire-wourckes of rare executiones by sea and lande, as also of fortifications. Composed by Captaine Gerat Barry, Irish.’ To this volume, which is illustrated with curious plates and plans, Barry prefixed a dedication to David Fitz-David Barry, earl of Barrymore, viscount of Buttevant, baron of Ibaune, lord of Barrycourte and Castleliones, &c. This he dated ‘at the court of Bruxells, the first of May 1634.’ The publications of Barry are of great