Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Vernon, George (1578?-1639)
VERNON, Sir GEORGE (1578?–1639), judge, only son of Sir Thomas Vernon of Haslington, Cheshire, by Dorothy, daughter of William Egerton of Betley in the same county, was born about 1578. He was admitted in November 1594 a student at the Inner Temple, where in 1603 he was called to the bar, and in the autumn of 1621 and in Lent 1627 was reader. He was also in 1627 called to the degree of serjeant-at-law (4 July), advanced to a seat in the court of exchequer (13 Nov.), and knighted (23 Dec.) Thence he was transferred on 8 May 1632 to the court of common pleas. In the following year he was placed on the ecclesiastical commission (17 Dec.) He concurred with his colleagues of the common-law bench in the extrajudicial opinion in favour of the legality of ship-money, signed on 7 Feb. 1636–1637, and also, by writing, being absent by reason of ill-health, in the judgment in Hampden's case. He died at Serjeants' Inn on 16 Dec. 1639. His remains were interred (18 Dec.) in the Temple church. His contemporary, Sir George Croke, describes him as ‘a man of great reading in the statutes and common law, and of extraordinary memory.’
Vernon married twice: first, Jane, daughter of Richard Corbet of Stoke, Shropshire; secondly, Alice, daughter of Sir George Booth of Dunham, Cheshire. By his second wife he had no issue; by the first he had three daughters, of whom the second and survivor, Muriel, married Henry Vernon of Sudbury, Derbyshire, ancestor of George Venables Vernon, first lord Vernon of Kinderton (created on 1 May 1762).
[Ormerod's Cheshire, ed. Helsby, iii. 317–18; Inner Temple Books; Dugdale's Orig. Jurid. p. 168; Chron. Ser. pp. 108, 109; Rymer's Fœdera, ed. Sanderson, xix. 348; Whitelocke's Liber Famel. (Camden Soc.) p. 108; Metcalfe's Book of Knights, p. 188; Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. ii. 20; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1633–4 p. 326, 1636–7 p. 418; Cobbett's State Trials, iii. 1125; Croke's Reports, ed. Leach, iii. 565; Collins's Peerage, vii. 401; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]