An opportunity was soon found of bringing him again before the King, under a more advantageous aspect than in his black suit, and those who sought his advancement henceforth supplied him with the means of appearing conformably to the fashion of the day, by affording him a present income far above his poor patrimonial inheritance.[62] Thus assisted, the young man prepared to meet the King at Cambridge, where, in the month of March, 1614-15, the honour of a royal visit was conferred upon that University. Footnote 62: Fuller’s Worthies of Leicestershire. The influence of the Somerset family had, in a great measure, procured this distinction to Cambridge, in preference to Oxford; for the Earl of Suffolk, the father of the Countess of Somerset, had been chosen Chancellor of Cambridge during the preceding year;[63] and to honour this nobleman,—who had also been recently constituted Lord Treasurer, an office from which he was eventually degraded—James announced that he purposed to fulfil an intention which he had held for some years, but had deferred, as the good fortune of Villiers decreed, until this critical period. For a powerful cabal was now concentrated against the hateful sway of this branch of the Howard family, and Villiers was the anchor on which the hopes of the adverse party rested. Footnote 63: 1613. To the sagacity of the Earl of Suffolk, and not to that of James I., was the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot ascribed. See Winwood’s Memorials, vol. ii., p. 186.