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Although he became one of the most famous figures in English history, Oliver Cromwell began life as an ordinary country gentleman; when the English Civil War broke out in 1642, he was a middle-aged father of five children with no military training. Yet within a decade, according to one leading Royalist statesman and historian, he “mounted himself into the throne of the three kingdoms [England, Wales, and Scotland] without the name of a king but with greater power and authority than had ever been exercised or claimed by any king.