Example sentences of "they [vb past] [been] [prep] the [num ord] " in BNC.
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| 1 | But the South African Rugby Board and the South African Rugby Union continued to get bogged down , as they had been for the last three years , even with the help of intermediaries of the stature of Nelson Mandela , in their attempts to reach accord and form one , united body for rugby football in their country . |
| 2 | In their eighties , they were still living in Norham Gardens , the North Oxford avenue that leads to Lady Margaret Hall , the women 's college where they had studied and taught ; they had been among the first women students to be allowed officially to take a degree , though woman sat the examinations in order to make the point after the college 's foundation in 1878 . |
| 3 | ( Two surviving compositors , both of whom began work in 1909 told me that they had been among the last recruits . ) |
| 4 | We must remember , too , that Dissenters in the 18th century were not the political revolutionaries they had been in the 17th — there was a sense in which the rabid Nonconformity of one generation became the established respectability of the next , and commentators like Halevy have suggested that it was precisely the innate conservatism of the new dissent , Methodism , which helped stave off revolution in England in the early 19th century — a real opium of the people , in effect . |
| 5 | It is probable that plague remained a constant threat , even if it is less well recorded in contemporary writings than at an earlier date ; probably men were more inured to its presence than they had been in the first shock of 1348 . |
| 6 | The magnates ruled the localities by the end of the thirteenth century as political bosses , rather than as the petty princes they had been in the twelfth century . |
| 7 | Mary 's reign witnessed a spontaneous renewal of enthusiasm for the local celebrations banned under Edward , and Corpus Christi processions , Whitsun ales , May games , and the decking of churches once more became as common as they had been in the last years of Henry 's reign . |
| 8 | There were clearly changes occurring , and the borderlines between social classes , never very clear at the best of times , were probably less precise than they had been before the First World War — though class barriers were by no means collapsing in the real world of health , education and social opportunity . |