I’m currently reading a book about 19th-century higher education, published in 1930. (Please don’t ask why.) It includes this sentence:
In the first place, college faculties were, as it is notorious that they commonly are, strongholds of conservatism.
This is a reference to institutional small-c conservatism–i.e., the general notion of resistance to change–but still. I had to read this line about five times before moving on.