Example sentences of "had been [prep] great [noun] " in BNC.
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| 1 | The Victorian historian Macaulay may well have been right when he stated that the Cornish , ‘ … a fierce , bold and athletic race , among whom there was a stronger provincial feeling than in any other part of the realm ’ , were not so much concerned with the matter of religious principle on which Bishop Trelawney had made his stand ; Trelawney was ‘ … reverenced less as a ruler of the Church than as the head of an honourable house and the heir , through twenty descents , of ancestors who had been of great note before the Normans had set foot on English ground ’ . |
| 2 | The council convener , Robert Gough , who presented a plaque to the crew , said it was with regret that they said goodbye to the squadron , which had been of great comfort to people in difficulty on land and sea . |
| 3 | He went on to say that they had been at great pains to build up an efficient fifth-column unit and should not be expected to give up their best men as soon as they were trained . |
| 4 | At Pemberley the ‘ many family portraits … could have little to fix the attention of a stranger ’ ; at Sotherton they are ‘ no longer any thing to any body but Mrs Rushworth , who had been at great pains to learn all that the housekeeper could teach ’ . |
| 5 | I had been at great pains to appear distant towards him and been more successful than I had thought I could be . |