Venables Vernon’s grandfather, the 3rd Baron Vernon, a younger son of the 1st Baron with his third wife, was the older brother of Edward Venables Vernon, archbishop of York. This Member’s father, a former soldier and an enthusiast for naval architecture, married the heiress to Stapleford, where their only child was born in 1803. As a youth, Venables Vernon seconded the nomination of Francis Mundy* at the Derbyshire by-election in November 1822, and, a Whig like his father, he was admitted to Brooks’s in 1826, sponsored by Lord Althorp* and George Lamb*. He married one of the daughters of the Tory Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1824 and apparently lived for a time in Italy (where his first son was born in February 1829), so acquiring an interest in Italian literature. His father succeeded to the barony in March 1829. Venables Vernon, whose suitability had been drawn to the attention of the duke of Devonshire, was invited at short notice to stand as a second Whig candidate for Derbyshire at the general election of 1831 by Lord Waterpark*, in loose alliance with the Cavendish Member. Although he had no funds and suspected that this request was an attempt to make him subservient, he accepted and his canvassing apparently involved him (then or soon afterwards) in making speeches even in small towns and villages.
Venables Vernon presented the Chesterfield petition for its own enfranchisement, 25 June, and pressed for legislation to ameliorate the condition of slaves in the West Indies, 27 June 1831. He voted for the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, and generally for its details. Admitting that he could not speak and had in fact ‘made a sad mess of speaking at my election’, he informed his father, 19 Aug., about his effort on the 11th that
from not sufficiently raising my voice, I was not much heard by the other side of the House. I thought all the time that I was speaking in a stertorian tone, but still my own side kept crying ‘speak out, speak out’. At one time I lost myself completely from sheer fright but the House crying ‘hear, hear’, I was enabled to resume.
He argued in favour of splitting counties into smaller, more accessible and less expensive divisions, and wrote to Lord Vernon on the 23rd that he had voted for this because he was pledged to support the whole bill, adding, however, that ‘since Lord Chandos’s amendment [to enfranchise £50 tenants-at-will], which I consider to have violated the principle of the bill, has been carried, I consider myself at liberty to vote against it (if I wish) on bringing up the report’.
Late the previous year Venables Vernon had come under pressure from Devonshire to state that he would stand with the sitting Cavendish Member for the Northern division of the county, but, since his father’s estates were in south Derbyshire, he chose to offer for that division. This arrangement meant that he did not risk his friend Thomas Gisborne’s* candidacy for Derbyshire North; it might have jeopardized Waterpark’s, but they were both returned for Derbyshire South after a contest at the general election of 1832. He sat as a Liberal until his defeat two years later.