Hence

Can "hence," in the sense of "from that time," be used in the past tense?
I can't think of an example.

Such as "Dave died in 1994. His wife passed away two years hence."
The idea of 'hence' is 'from this time'. ie from the perspective of the time that has been established. Usually, this is the present time.

Hi,

Just to make sure that I understand:

So "Dave died in 1994. His wife passed away two years hence" won't work because the perspective of the time is not established here whereas it is in "Dave died in 1994. He wife would pass away two years hence"? So you will not have established the perspective of the time unless "would" is used?

Thanks.

The dictionaries base the phrase only in the present:

from this time; from now: They will leave a month hence.

from this time: a year hence

In the future (used after a period of time):two years hence they might say something quite different

From this time; from now: A year hence it will be forgotten.

later than the present

I, too, have noticed that all the examples in the dictionaries that I have consulted give examples for the phrase only in the present. That was why I raised my question - whether the phrase can be used in the past tense - in the first place.

Thanks.

Found this example at Oxford online dictionary:

"It is this practice that he spends all his time doing now, but there were others he spent a lot of time doing in New York many years hence."

Here the example seems to imply that something happened in the past, after which the person in question spent "a lot of time" in New York where he had practices of some kind. Then they stopped