Before rising to power, Oliver Cromwell attended Cambridge — and his head is now buried beneath Sidney Sussex College‘s chapel:
It may be added here, with regard to athletic exercises, that Cromwell, when at Cambridge, distinguished himself far more at football and cudgels than at the exercises of the schools; and that he, like Marlborough, Clive, and many other great men, would never have risen to the command of armies, if such rise had depended upon a competitive examination, in which prigs and pedants will generally beat men of great force of character or genius for the arts of war or peace.