Background
The son of Francis and Joan Venning, he was born in Devon, perhaps at Kingsteignton, about 1621.
The son of Francis and Joan Venning, he was born in Devon, perhaps at Kingsteignton, about 1621.
He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was admitted as a sizar on 1 April 1643, graduated Bachelor of Arts 1646, and proceeded Master of Arts
1650.
Venning held a lectureship at Street Olave"s Church in the parish of Southwark Street Olave, where he had a reputation as a preacher of charity sermons. He collaboratd in Southwark with William Cooper. In 1654 he was pastor of a gathered church there.
He died on 10 March 1674, in his fifty-third year, and was buried in Bunhill Fields.
An Elegy on his death was printed on a broadsheet in March 1674. Of his style, John Edwards remarked in The Preacher (1705, i 203): "He turns sentences up and down, and delights in little cadences and chiming of words.".