Robert Venables

Robert Venables (ca. 1613–1687), was a soldier during the English Civil War and noted angler.

Venables was a lieutenant-colonel in the parliamentary army and was wounded at the siege of Chester in 1645. He was appointed governor of Liverpool in 1648 and then served with success in Ireland from 1649 until 1654. Venables was sent as joint commander with Admiral William Penn on the Caribbean expedition against the Spanish in the West Indies in 1654. The English forces were routed at the Siege of Santo Domingo in 1655, but managed to successfully take the Spanish colony of Jamaica for England later in the same year. On his return to England he was sent to the Tower of London for failing to wrest the larger prize of Hispaniola from Spanish control, and cashiered in October the same year. Venables was briefly appointed governor of Chester in 1660. After the Restoration he bought the estate of Wincham, retired from public life, and remained a nonconformist. He published a treatise on fishing, The Experienced Angler, in 1662.

Robert Venables was the son of Robert Venables of Antrobus, Cheshire and Ellen Simcox, daughter of Richard Simcox of Rudheath. The Venables were a cadet branch of a family that could trace their ancestry back to the Norman Conquest.

Venables entered the parliamentary army when the Civil War broke out, and served as a captain under Sir William Brereton in Cheshire and Lancashire. In 1644 he distinguished himself in the defence of Nantwich, and in 1645 he was governor of Tarvin. In October of that year he was wounded at the siege of Chester, being then a lieutenant-colonel. In 1646 he commanded a mopping up operation in North Wales which was sent to reduce the remaining royalist garrisons in the Principality.

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