Edmund Verney

Sir Edmund Verney (1616 – 11 September 1649) was an English soldier who fought on the Royalist side during the English Civil War. Education Verney was born in 1616, was third son of Sir Edmund Verney and his wife, Margaret (died 1641), daughter of Sir Thomas Denton of Hillesden. Edmund was educated at a private school at Gloucester, at Winchester College (1634), and then at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he matriculated on 22 January 1636, learnt little and got into debt and into disgrace with his tutor, Henry Wilkinson. Thence he was removed to the care of Mr. Crowther, rector of Newton Blossomville, formerly his elder brother Ralph's Oxford tutor, who found him "devoid of the first grounds of logicke or other University learning", but "willing and capable". Military service Verney entered the army as a volunteer in 1639, joined his father in the army of King Charles I on the Scottish border, and from that time proved himself a first-rate soldier, enduring hardships cheerfully, and winning the confidence of his men. With the first money he earned he paid off his Oxford creditors, and, when the First Bishops' War with Scotland was over, joined the army of the states in Flanders in Sir Thomas Culpepper's company. In winter quarters at Utrecht he studied Latin, French, and history seven or eight hours a day at the university, and did much to repair the time wasted at Oxford. He had many disappointments about promotion, though Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (sister of Charles I) did her best to help him. In 1640 he served again in the English army against the Scots in the Second Bishops' War. Verney sided with the king in the civil war, and suffered heavily for his loyalty; his pay as well as that of his men was constantly in arrears; the grief of his father's death at the Battle of Edgehill was embittered by the sorrow and indignation he felt that his eldest brother, Ralph, should support the Parliamentary cause; his portion invested in the aulnage was practically forfeited, and he suffered most of all from the mistakes he witnessed daily in the conduct of his own leaders.