At the age of seventeen, Oliver Cromwell left the Grammar School, at Huntingdon, and entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Both as a school-boy and a collegian he distinguished himself more in athletic sports, than in application to study, and he appears to have led a wild irregular life, according to his own admission, for it is difficult to sift the truth, from the preposterous flattery on the one hand, and the unqualified abuse on the other, which characterise Cromwell’s biographers, according to their political opinions. In recording his own conversion, at the age of twenty years, he says: “Before which time, I hated holiness, and the Word of God.” His mother sent him to study at Lincoln’s Inn, “where,” says Carrington, “he associated with those of the best rank, and quality, and the most ingenious persons, for though not averse to study and contemplation, he seemed rather addicted to conversation, and the reading of men’s characters, than to a continual poring over authors.” On completing his twenty-first year, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier, of Felsted, in Essex, a kinswoman of Hampden’s, who brought him a modest dowry, which she nobly relinquished with the additional money he had settled on her for life, to rescue her husband from pecuniary difficulties in after years; a woman of irreproachable life, and unobtrusive manners, who tolerated rather than coveted grandeur, and distinction, an excellent housewife, and a loving help-mate. The newly married pair fixed their residence in Huntingdon, where his mother still lived, and where several children were born to them.
Cromwell now turned his mind to those studies, and pursuits which paved his way to future greatness. He made his house the refuge for the “disaffected,” or the “persecuted” Nonconformist Ministers; he encouraged them in their opposition, prayed, preached, built a chapel for them, supported them on all occasions, and became so popular, that the chief of his fellow townsmen offered to return him for the Borough, in the next Parliament that was summoned. In 1625 he failed—in 1628 he was returned as member for Huntingdon, when his cousin Hampden also took his seat. Dr. South describes Oliver’s appearance on this occasion, in a manner that caused the Merry Monarch to observe: “Oddsfish! that chaplain must be a Bishop; put me in mind of him, next vacancy.” “Who that beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow, as Cromwell, first entering the Parliament House, with a torn, thread-bare coat, and greasy hat (perhaps neither of them paid for) would have believed that in a few years.” ... &c.?