“In the first place, according to your most gracious commands laid upon me at the Hague, when I offered to make my Lord Chancellor privy to what I should at any time presume to offer to your Majesty’s transcendent judgment, having sufficiently suffered for treating with the late King, of happy memory, alone; to which request of mine you were pleased to give this most gracious and never-to-be-forgotten reply, that, notwithstanding you would have me first to acquaint yourself therewith, and then only such as your Majesty should consent unto, and think proper for it: In pursuance whereof I most humbly offer this following discourse, which I shall with a most ready and implicit obedience augment, diminish, or alter, as your Majesty shall think fittest; disputing nothing, much less waiving anything, that your Majesty shall command either as to substance or circumstance. “MY LORDS, “Amongst Almighty God’s infinite mercies to me in this world, I account it one of the greatest that his Divine goodness vouchsafed me parents as well careful as able to give me virtuous education, and extraordinary breeding at home and abroad, in Germany, France, and Italy; allowing me abundantly in those parts, and since most plentifully at my master of happy memory, the late King’s Court, by which means, had it not been my own fault, I ought to have become better able and more capable to serve Almighty God, my King and country, which obligatory ends of theirs have I always had in my eyes, as drawing and sucking them thence, it being certainly the greatest and surest portions parents can leave to their children; since breeding and knowledge cannot be taken from them, when as riches and possessions are fading and perishable, witness my own case, my Lords. Yet, by dear-bought experience and their great expenses, for which I honour the happy memory of my most beloved parents, more than for my very life, drawn from them, they giving me by the one but my being, and by the other my _bene esse_. Whereby I find nothing more certain than that the way to make oneself considerably useful to his Prince and nation, is the surest means for him to become cherished by them, which they then do for their own sake, not his, though he had spent and lost above 7, or £800,000, sterling; and narrowly escaped several times, both by sea and land, imminent dangers, and long and close imprisonment, and a scaffold, threatening death, as I have done, _Experte Crede Roberto_, my Lords; yet happy is this day unto me, wherein I have the honour, sitting amongst your Lordships, to express from my heart that I have not the least repining thought within me, though I had suffered ten times more for so good a cause, and so gracious and obliging a master as the late King, of happy memory, was unto me. And for so majestical and promising a Prince as my new sovereign is, whom God long preserve; and, morally speaking, cannot do amiss, whilst he hearkens