> as lemmas

c1386 G. Chaucer Doctor's Tale 149 Whan schapen was al this conspiracye Fro poynt to poynt.

a1513 R. Fabyan New Cronycles Eng. & Fraunce (1516) I. lxxxvi. f. xxxii^v Hauynge knowlege of the sayde conspiracy.

1553 R. Eden tr. S. Münster Treat. Newe India sig. Jvj^v Fearing greater deceytes and conspiracies.

1632 in S. R. Gardiner Rep. Cases Star Chamber & High Comm. (1886) 170 I hould here is a conspiracie by Travers and Frost and his daughter.

1702 Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion I. ii. 129 In all Conspiracies there must be great secrecy.

1781 E. Gibbon Decline & Fall II. 81 A secret conspiracy had been formed against his person and government.

1839 G. P. R. James Louis XIV I. 105 Rumours of a conspiracy became general.

1865 J. S. Mill Auguste Comte 199 M. Comte used to reproach his early English admirers with maintaining the ‘conspiracy of silence’ concerning his later performances.

1870 Gentleman's Mag. New Ser. 5 331 Compel them, if they must divert themselves with a species of amateur conspiracy, to enter into a conspiracy of silence.

1885 Pall Mall Gaz. 6 July 1 No longer will good men be able with easy conscience to join in that indignant ‘Hush!’ by which the evil-doers have hitherto silenced every attempt to make articulate the smothered wail that rises unceasing from the woeful under-world. There is now an end to that conspiracy of silence.

1885 Pall Mall Gaz. 10 July 1/1 The absurd conspiracy of silence which is making our contemporaries so supremely ludicrous.

1885 Church Reformer July 146/1 When such work as the Pall Mall has done is treated by the ordinary press with a conspiracy of silence, then it becomes our duty..to thank that paper for its outspoken boldness.

1931 V. J. McGill Schopenhauer ix. 303 Their ‘conspiracy of silence’ had at last proved ineffective.

1944 G. B. Shaw Everybody's Polit. What's What? xxiv. 223 The conspiracy of silence about the blunders and failures of medicine.

1965 Times Lit. Suppl. 27 May 437/3 It semed perfectly correct to me when I read the article in question, although I find that English grammars seem to maintain a conspiracy of silence on the subject.