Edmund Verney (Cavalier)

Sir Edmund Verney (1 January 1590 or 7 April 1596 – 23 October 1642) was an English politician, soldier and favourite of King Charles I. At the outbreak of the English Civil War he supported the Royalist cause and was killed at the Battle of Edgehill.

Edmund Verney was the son of Sir Edmund Verney of Pendley Manor near Tring, Buckinghamshire and his third wife Mary Blakeney. He had an elder half-brother Sir Francis Verney, who died in 1615, and two elder half-sisters on his mother's side, Ann Turvill (who married Sir John Leeke of Edmonton), and Ursula St. Barbe, who married her stepbrother Sir Francis Verney. Knighted by King James in 1611, Edmund was sent to Madrid, and returned to join the household of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, to which his uncle Francis Verney was one of the falconers. Upon Henry's death in 1612, Edmund became a gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles, Duke of York, later Charles I.

From 1620 he made his family home at Claydon House, Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire (which the Giffard family had held by lease from the Verneys), where he was the near neighbour of Sir Thomas Chaloner of Steeple Claydon. His financial sense was poor, and he was severely indebted by the early 1620s. In 1623, he accompanied Charles and the Duke of Buckingham to Spain to court the Infanta Maria. While there, he protected a dying Englishman from a Catholic priest by punching the priest in the face, which did not endear him to the Spaniards.

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