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Verney is the name of an English family which first settled at Fleetmarston in Buckinghamshire, then at Pendley in Hertfordshire, and finally at Middle Claydon which the family purchased in the 1460s in Buckinghamshire where descendents still live in Claydon House.
The Verney’s family’s pedigree goes back to Ralph de Verney (1216–23), but the fortunes of the family were made by Sir Ralph Verney (1410-78). After settling in Buckinghamshire in the Thirteenth Century, the family had purchased Middle Claydon by the 1460s and it was during this period that Sir Ralph Verney became lord mayor of London in 1465 and M.P. for the city in 1472. Sir Ralph Verney’s eldest son, Sir John Verney, married Margaret, heiress of Sir Robert Whittingham of Pendley. In 1525, Sir Ralph Verney’s fourth son, of the same name, married Elizabeth, one of the six co-heiresses of John, Lord Braye.
Sir Edmund Verney of Pendley (d. 1600) left two sons, half-brothers, Sir Francis Verney (1584-1615), who became a soldier of fortune and a buccaneer, converted to Islam and died at Messina in hospital in extreme poverty, and Sir Edmund Verney (1590–1642) of Middle Claydon. Sir Edmund accompanied Prince Charles and Buckingham on the abortive mission to Madrid in 1623, and was knight-marshal to King Charles I. When the English Civil War broke out the royal standard was entrusted to him at Nottingham, and while defending it he was slain at Edgehill in 1642.
His eldest son, Sir Ralph Verney (1613-96), 1st baronet, sat for Aylesbury in both the Short and the Long Parliaments. He took the side of the parliament at the outset of the Civil War, but went abroad in 1643 rather than sign the Covenant, and his estates were sequestrated in 1646. He returned to England in 1653, and, though he refused to act against Oliver Cromwell, was subsequently reconciled to the Restoration government. His brother, Sir Edmund (1616-49), had taken the king’s side, and was one of those killed by Cromwell’s soldiers at the sack of Drogheda in 1649.
The present Verney family is descended from Sir Harry Verney, 2nd baronet (1801–1894), after whom the quaint hamlet of Verney Junction in North Buckinghamshire is named.
However, this illustrious family is not to be confused with that of educator and writer Louis Verney, who in 1746 reformed and liberalized Portugal’s educational system. His best-known book, The True Method of Studying, was a landmark in European teaching methods. Two centuries later, his name was given to Verney College, located in suburban Johannesburg, South Africa, established in 1975. The school originally catered to Portuguese children who, having relocated from Mozambique and Angola, found it difficult to integrate to an English-style educational system of education. Verney College defied defying apartheid laws by accepting children of all nationalities, races and religions.
(All of this, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with me or my family: my paternal grandfather changed his surname from Skvarek to Verney after emigrating from Slovakia and naturalizing as an American citizen — I just wanted an excuse to use a couple of Verney family crests I really like).
