This is Angela Odell, and you are listening to Real Cool History for Kids, a podcast show featuring history told from a distinctly biblical worldview perspective. Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 140 of Real Cool History for Kids. This episode is for Zachary, Faith, Eloise, Caleb, and Grace Beach, who wanted me to tell the story

of Oliver Cromwell.

Hey, Beach, kids, this one's for you.

Before we begin our story, I think it would be helpful to have your globe or

your world map nearby. So if you need to, and you can, pause me now and go get one of those.

Our story is going to take place in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

So go ahead and find those on your map or globe.

We've had quite a few stories that include locations in England, so you probably are a little bit familiar with that.

Okay.

Are you ready?

Here we go. Let's start by setting the historical backdrop for our story. Oliver Cromwell was born in 1599, so that is eight years before the settlement of Jamestown in America.

Remember, Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America in 1607.

And the pilgrims came in 1620. So Oliver Cromwell would have been about 21 years old at that time.

Oliver Cromwell was born in England during the reign of King James I. This is the king who commissioned the King James Version of the Bible. He was the son of Mary

Queen of Scots and he was a distant cousin of the Queen's Mary and Elizabeth, the daughters

of King Henry the 8th. Oliver's father, who had been a member of one of Queen Elizabeth's parliaments,

died when Oliver was only 18 years old and away at college. Well, after his father died,

Oliver left college to come home and provide for his mother and sisters.

It was a couple years later, he married a girl named Elizabeth, and she was the daughter

of a London merchant. Oliver and Elizabeth would eventually add nine children to their family.

Besides being a member of Parliament, Oliver's father had been the

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