Oliver was born on the 25th of April 1599, was educated under Dr Thomas Beard, a fervent puritan, at the free school at Huntingdon, and on the 23rd of April 1616 matriculated as a fellow-commoner at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a hotbed of puritanism, subsequently studying law in London.
He entered St John's College, Cambridge, as a fellow-commoner in 1701, and took degrees of LL.B.
He was admitted to the Middle Temple in February 1637, and in May be became a fellow commoner of Balliol College, Oxford.
Francis matriculated as a fellow-commoner of King's College, Cambridge, of which Sir John Cheke was provost, in November 1548; and he continued studying there amid strongly Protestant influences until Michaelmas 1550, when he appears, after the fashion of the time, to have gone abroad to complete his education (Stahlin, p. 79).
