> as lemmas

c1330 Arth. & Merl. 1196 (Kölbing) On a day, as ich ȝou telle, Þo ich þre sechers snelle Þat were ysent fram þe king.

1483 Cath. Angl. 328/1 A Seker, scrutator.

1532 (c1385) Usk's Test. Loue in Wks. G. Chaucer Prol. f. cccxxv^v Knoweyng of trouth in causes of thynges, was more hardyer in the first sechers..& lyghter in vs that han folowed after.

c1555 W. Baldwin & T. Palfreyman Treat. Moral Philos. (new ed.) v. ix. sig. Miij Neyther slaunder, nor flatter, nor be no seker out of other mennes matters.

1596 J. Dalrymple tr. J. Leslie Hist. Scotl. (1888) I. 136 He trett mekle the seikeris of wylde beistes.

a1686 D. Clarkson Serm. (1696) 150 He rewards all seekers.

1819 Ld. Byron Don Juan: Canto I cxliv. 75 'Tis odd, not one of all these seekers thought..Of looking in the bed as well as under.

1840 Blackwood's Mag. 48 273 Leonardo was mentally a seeker after truth—a scientist; Coreggio was an assertor of truth—an artist.

1846 J. C. Calhoun Speech 14 May in Papers (1996) XXIII. 110 As soon as the Government becomes the mere creature of seekers of office, your free institutions are nearly at an end.

1868 F. W. Farrar (title) Seekers after God.

1881 Lady D. Hardy Through Cities & Prairie Lands 131 I fancy they are searching for the bride... But nobody attempts to put the clue in the hands of the seekers.

a1968 A. M. Farrer Interpr. & Belief (1976) 138 Madame Blavatsky, than whom few women have been more remarkable for the power of making solid objects fade into thin air among the mountains of India, and crystallize back to physical solidity in the middle of English drawing-room cushions, thence to be hacked out with scissors by delighted seekers after truth.