to so wise a great Council, and so tender of his good and welfare as your Lordships, assisted by so discreet, experienced, and well-affected persons as sit now in the honourable House of Commons, the whole kingdom’s representatives. And may your Lordships be ever as tender of your innate privileges, members, and birthrights, as they of theirs, and both of you equally likewise tender of his Majesty’s just and undoubted prerogatives, upon which two hinges, or rather bases (that is, our most gracious King’s prerogatives and the birthright of his subjects), this excellent government of King and Parliament outvies and excels all other in the world. Let them, therefore, my Lords, hold together as the surest props of a settled kingdom; his Majesty’s power consisting in nothing more than in the greatness of your Lordships, who are, as well by Divine Providence as human policy, allotted to be as it were the medium between the King and the people; that is, to interpose yourselves as mediators if the King’s supreme authority should become severe, which cannot be feared from so gracious a Prince; as also to be curbers of the people’s rustic stubbornness, if they should prove insolent, which cannot likewise happen to a nation that hath so lately smarted for such inconveniences, as, had the Lords’ former greatness and power been continued in them, could never have happened; for, as I hold with the old saying, _No Bishops, no King_, so may I boldly aver that no power of temporal Lords being extant, there will be neither Bishop nor King. But I am too tedious, my Lords; yet what I further shall presume to say, will need no eloquence, being upon a theme pleasing, as I humbly conceive, to the minds of all your Lordships, there being none of you whose birth brings you unto this place, but so much generosity possesses your hearts, that you conclude and harbour a firm resolution to believe and follow that noble and heroic maxim--_Beatius est dare quam accipere_, since _Beneficium accipere est libertatem vendere_, a thing beneath your Lordships. According, then, to which maxim, as having the honour to be a member of this House, esteeming in the first place the right of Peerage, even before the titles of Earl, Marquis, or Duke; as a Peer, therefore, I say of this House, I shall (with your Lordships’ approbation) humbly offer a present unto his most excellent Majesty, our most gracious Sovereign, a present, my Lords, which cannot be done without you, and fit to be owned by a House of Lords, it being no less than to raise an auxiliary troop for his Majesty’s Life-guard, of an hundred horse, and commonly called in France an hundred Meistres; [Reistres?] that is, each Cavalier to keep a servant with a led horse, as well as his own, and one of them to be worth £100. The whole troop shall amount the first day unto upwards of ten thousand pounds, besides arms and equipage accordingly; nay, my Lords, every one of this troop shall be