Francis Verney
| Sir Francis Verney | |
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An oil portrait of Sir Francis Verney prior to his leaving England in 1607–08. It has been on display at Claydon House for over 400 years.
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| Born | 1584 Tring, Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | 6 October 1615 (aged 31) Messina, Sicily |
| Piratical career | |
| Other names | Sir Francis Verney of Claydon Sir Francis Verney of Penley |
| Type | Barbary corsair |
| Years active | 1608–1610? |
| Base of operations | Algiers |
Sir Francis Verney (1584 – 6 September 1615) was an English adventurer, soldier of fortune, and pirate. A nobleman by birth, he left England after the House of Commons sided with his stepmother in a legal dispute over his inheritance, and became a mercenary in Morocco and later a Barbary corsair.
Verney was among the most successful captains to operate on the Barbary coast during the early 17th century and, despite having no seafaring experience, was one of four leaders of the Tunisian pirate fleet commanded by John Ward. His supposed conversion to Islam with Ward in 1610 was the cause of considerable controversy in his native country. Verney was later captured and spent two years in the Sicily slave galleys. He was rescued by an English Jesuit in 1614 and converted to Catholicism shortly before his death.
The only son of Audrey Gardner (died 1588) and Sir Edmund Verney (died 1600), Francis Verney was born in 1584 at Pendley Manor in Tring, Hertfordshire, England. His father's first and third marriages into two other royal families, given the complexities of family ties in Tudor England, made Francis one of an indeterminate number of stepchildren within the Redmaynes, Turvilles, and St. Barbe families; he was related to a total of seven royal families through marriage. Within his immediate family, he had a younger half-brother, Edmund (1590–1642), who was born on 1 January 1590, the only child produced by Edmund and Lady Mary Blakeney.
In 1599, Francis was married to his stepsister, Ursula St. Barbe, daughter of William St. Barbe of Broadlands and Mary Blackeney. The marriage was presumably arranged by Edmund and Lady Mary, described as a "masterful" woman, to cement their families fortunes and, more specifically, to protect the interests of Lady Mary and her daughter. She also persuaded her husband to divide the property granted to Francis by his uncle's will with their son Edmund. This resulted in the original will being superseded and this new settlement confirmed by a private act of parliament in 1597. These moves greatly increased the influence and power of Lady Mary. Edmund Verney died on 11 January 1600, when Francis was only 15 years old, and was subsequently sent off to Trinity College Oxford in September of that year. Though little of his childhood is recorded, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, he had "all the advantages that a fine face and figure, great personal courage, and a magnificent taste in dress could bestow". It was during this period that he began running huge debts spending as much as £3,000 a year. Leaving Oxford, Verney soon rebelled against his arranged marriage living separately from his wife in St. Dunstan's-in-the-West (a notorious neighborhood of Alsatia, where one of his servants, Richard Gygges, was murdered in a drunken brawl in 1604); he would legally separate from Ursula upon reaching adulthood and provided her £50 a year for the rest of her life. Verney was knighted at the Tower of London on 14 March 1603/4.
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