Viscount Cave retired as Lord Chancellor early in 1928. Hogg was offered the job but did not want to accept, on the grounds that it “barred any chance of the premiership” and appealed to Neville Chamberlain for help (26 March 1928) on the grounds that he did not want to see “W. Churchill” become Prime Minister after Baldwin. Chamberlain agreed, and felt that Churchill and his friend Lord Birkenhead were more likely to agree to serve in a future Hogg government than under Chamberlain (both Hogg and Chamberlain protested unconvincingly to one another that they did not particularly want to be Prime Minister). However, Baldwin insisted that Hogg accept the promotion. Besides his own reluctance to accept, he was also aware that a peerage might also inhibit the political ambitions of his elder son, Quintin Hogg, who was already active in student politics at Oxford University—as indeed it did.