Family and Education

b. 9 Feb. 1710, 1st s. of Henry Vernon by his 1st w. m. (1) 22 June 1733, Mary (d. 23 Feb. 1740), da. and coh. of Thomas, 6th Baron Howard of Effingham, 3s. 2da.; (2) 22 Dec. 1741, Anne (d. 22 Sept. 1742), da. of Sir Thomas Lee, 3rd Bt., of Hartwell, Bucks.; (3) 10 Apr. 1744, Martha, da. of Hon. Simon Harcourt, M.P., sis. of Simon, 1st Earl Harcourt, 3s. 4da. suc. to Kinderton under will of his mat. gt.-uncle Peter Venables 1715 and assumed name of Venables before Vernon 1715; fa. 1719, cr. Baron Vernon of Kinderton 12 May 1762.

Offices Held

Biography

Sitting unopposed as a Tory for Lichfield from 1731 to 1747, Vernon consistently voted with the Opposition till 1744, when he went over to the Administration with the Leveson Gowers, voted in favour of sending Hessian troops against the rebels in December 1745,1 and was classed by the Government as a ‘new ally’ in 1746. Reverting to opposition, he fought a bitter, expensive, and unsuccessful contest at Lichfield against the combined Gower and Anson interests at the general election of 1747.2 After the violent Tory demonstration at Lichfield races in September that year, his brother-in-law, Lord Harcourt, wrote to him:

You cannot conceive what a noise the Lichfield hunting meeting makes in town, where people make no ceremony of treating the company as Jacobites. I was under no uneasiness or apprehension of your being there, for I love and honour you too much to think you capable of such an action. Everybody’s eyes were upon you, and his Majesty told me in a little sort of private conference that he was very glad you was not at that, for he must and ought to consider that company as his declared enemies; upon which I assured him that whatever ill-treatment you might have received from your former friends, you were, however, incapable of entertaining a disloyal sentiment, or of doing anything that had the appearance of disrespect towards him; besides which, I told him that in the time of the rebellion you had exerted yourself very much in behalf of his Majesty and his cause.3

Shortly afterwards Thomas Anson reported to Lord Anson on 17 Oct. 1747 that Vernon

has entirely quitted his old connexions, which will appear soon by most plentiful abuse from that quarter. He now seems fixed and easy.4

He died 21 Aug. 1780, said to be worth £4,000 p.a.5

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Ilchester, Lord Holland, i. 121-2.
• 2. See LICHFIELD.
• 3. E.W. Harcourt, Harcourt Pprs. iii. 37.
• 4. Add. 15955, f. 62.
• 5. Staffs. Parl. Hist. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.) ii (2), p. 234.