> as lemmas

1680 R. Mansell Exact & True Narr. Late Popish Intrigue 5 This is the fact, so it was, and so they projected the matter.

1698 Proc. against John Fenwick 99 A Gentleman grounded his Argument; upon what? My Lord Chief Justice Hales's Opinion; but the fact is, that my Lord Chief Justice Hale States the Difference in Cases of Treason, and in Cases of Felony.

1781 Proc. Old Bailey 11 July 296/2 The fact is, that some of the papers only were taken from his person.

1789 Ann. Reg. 1787 Hist. Europe 113/1 The fact was, there neither had existed one nor the other.

1836 R. Owen Bk. New Moral World xii. 79 The simple fact is that the institutions of society have been formed..to oppose one part of human nature to another.

1860 W. M. Thackeray in Cornhill Mag. Aug. 254 There is old Dr. Squaretoso (he certainly was very rude to me, and that's the fact).

1861 M. V. Victor Maum Guinea xi. 206 Fact is, Judy was so pure and purty, no decent-minded man could help being good to her.

1903 ‘A. McNeill’ Egregious Eng. (ed. 3) 181 The fact is that the English mind in the lump is flat, coarse, and maggoty.

1938 G. W. Pierson Tocqueville & Beaumont in Amer. lviii. 772 Whatever his shortcomings or deficiencies, the simple fact was this: Alexis de Tocqueville had taken one of the great enthusiasms of the century, and given it a magistral analysis.

1952 J. Thompson Killer inside Me xvi. 105 Fact is, it didn't mean much to me a couple nights later when you came up to that old farm house where I was shacked up, and then cut cross-prairie to that little white house.

2010 S. Fry Fry Chrons. 105 It is a preposterous weakness and I could easily pretend that I am immune to it, but the fact is that I am not, so I may as well fess up.