He offered the Seals of Secretary of State to the Earl of Suffolk, a young man of thirty-two, totally unpractised in business, pompous, ignorant, and of no parts, but affecting to be the head of Grenville’s late party. The young Earl answered with modesty, that as he could not speak French, he was incapable of treating with foreign ministers, nor was he conversant in business; he wished for some high office, but not that of Secretary; and recommended a few of Grenville’s friends to preferment. He was appointed Lord Privy Seal in the room of Lord Halifax, Lord North’s uncle, to whom the Seals were given, though still worse qualified--for he knew nothing, was too old to learn, and too sottish and too proud to suspect what he wanted. But they were the great employments of the law which occasioned most remarks. Judge Bathurst,[149] one of the three Keepers of the Great Seal, for which he had scarce been thought worthy, was made Lord Chancellor, and created Lord Apsley, on whose ignorance the profession punned, calling him Lord _Absque_. De Grey succeeded Lord Chief Justice Wilmot (who retired) in the Common Pleas; Thurlow was appointed Attorney, and that abandoned man Wedderburne,[150] Solicitor-General. The last had certainly no superior in the House of Commons for eloquence, readiness, argument, or satire; nor in Westminster Hall for want of principles. His politics, like his pleading, were at the service of whoever offered him most.[151] It was remarkable that the Earl of Guilford and Lord Bathurst, fathers of the Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, were both living at this time.