(Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, pp. 174–268).
Cromwell received his education at the free school attached to the hospital of St. John, Huntingdon, during the mastership of Dr. Thomas Beard. At the age of seventeen, on 23 April 1616, he matriculated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, one of the colleges complained of by aud in 1628 as a nursery of puritanism. Royalist writers assert that both at school and the university he ‘made no proficiency in any kind of learning’ (Dugdale). But Edmund Waller testifies that he was ‘well read in Greek and Roman story,’ and when protector he frequently talked with foreign ambassadors in Latin. The statement of Bates is doubtless true that ‘he was quickly satiated with study, taking more delight in horse and field exercise,’ or, as Heath expresses it, ‘was more famous for his exercises in the fields than in the schools, being one of the chief matchmakers and players at football, cudgels, or any other boisterous sport or game’ (Flagellum, p. 8). The graver charges of early debauchery which they bring against him may safely be dismissed. On the death of his father in June 1617, Cromwell seems to have left the university and betaken himself to London to obtain the general knowledge of law which every country gentleman required. According to Heath he became a member of Lincoln’s Inn, but his name does not appear in the books of any of the Inns of Court. In London, at St. Giles’s Church, Cripplegate, he married, on 22 Aug. 1620, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier. Sir James is described as ‘of Tower Hill, London,’ was one of a family of city merchants, and possessed property near Felstead in Essex. It is noticeable that in a settlement drawn up immediately after the marriage, the bridegroom is described as ‘Oliver Cromwell, alias Williams’ (Noble, i. 123–4). After his marriage Cromwell took up his residence at Huntingdon, and occupied himself with the management of his paternal estate. Robert Cromwell, by his will, had left two-thirds of his-property to his widow for twenty-one years for the benefit of his daughters, so that the actual income of his eldest son cannot have been large. The fortunes of the Cromwell family were now declining, for Sir Oliver Cromwell, burdened with debts, was forced in 1627 to sell Hinchinbrook to Sir Sydney Montague, and the Montagues succeeded to the local influence once enjoyed by the Cromwells (ib. i. 43). It is therefore probable that the election of the younger Oliver as member for Huntingdon in 1628 was due as much to personal qualities as to any family interest.
In parliament Cromwell’s only reported speech was delivered on behalf of the free preaching of puritan doctrine, and against the silence which the king sought to impose on religious controversy (11 Feb. 1629). The Bishop of Winchester, he complained, had sent for Dr. Beard, prohibited him from controverting the popish tenets preached by Dr. Alabaster at Paul’s Cross, and reprehended him for disobeying the prohibition (Garmner, History of England, vii. 55). Of Cromwell’s action in public matters during the eleven years’ intermission of parliaments there is only one authentic fact recorded. In 1630 the borough of Huntingdon obtained a new charter, which vested the government of the town and the management of the town property in the hands of the mayor and twelve aldermen. Cromwell was named one of the three justices of the peace for the borough, and gave his consent to the proposed change (Duke of Manchester, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, i. 338). Afterwards, however, he raised the objection that the new charter enabled the aldermen to deal with the common property as they pleased, to the detriment of the poorer members of the community, and used strong language on the subject to Robert Barnard, mayor of the town and chief instigator of the change. On the complaint of the latter, his adversary was summoned to appear before the council, and the dispute was there referred to the arbitration of the Earl of Manchester. Cromwell owned that he had spoken in ‘heat and passion,’ and apologised to Barnard, but Manchester sustained Cromwell’s objections and ordered that the charter should be altered in three particulars to meet the risk which he had pointed out (preface to Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1629–31, p. viii). A later legend, based chiefly on a passage in the memoir of Sir Philip Warwick (p. 250), represents Cromwell as successfully opposing the king on the question of the drainage of the fens, but it is not supported by any contemporary evidence. If Cromwell took any part in the dispute between the king and the undertakers, which occurred in 1636, he probably, as at Huntingdon, defended the rights of the poor commoners, and therefore sided for the moment with the king and against the undertakers (Gardiner, History of England, viii. 297). The nickname of ‘Lord of the Fens,’ which has been supposed to refer to this incident, is first given to Cromwell by a royalist newspaper (Mercurius Aulicus, 6 Nov. 1643), in a series of comments on the names of the persons composing the council for the government of the foreign plantations of England appointed by parliament on 2 Nov. 1643.
