Oliver Cromwell Statue (St Ives, Cambridgeshire)

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Oliver Cromwell was born on 25th April 1599 in Huntingdon. He was educated at the Grammar school there, and spent a year at Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, before his father died in 1617. He studied at the Inns Court in London where he met and married Elizabeth Bourchier in 1620. They were a devoted couple throughout their long marriage and had eight children - four boys and four girls.

At that time England was in considerable religious and political turmoil which culminated in the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Great Britain became a Commonwealth and it was Oliver Cromwell who rose from modest beginnings to become one of the most powerful men in the country as head of the state, the "Lord Protector".