A thoughtful, serious boy naturally inclined to matters of faith, at the age of sixteen he became a page to a Catholic gentleman, Richard Sherwood.

Eventually, when he was about to give up the search, he achieved his purpose, but the younger brother, far from being won over to Gennings's faith, only besought him to go away, lest he himself should become suspect.

[1] His execution was particularly bloody, as his final speech angered Topcliffe, who ordered the rope to be cut down when he was barely stunned from the hanging.

The martyrdom of Edmund Gennings was the occasion of several extraordinary incidents, chief of which was the conversion of his younger brother John, who later wrote his biography, published in 1614 at Saint-Omer.

A Catholic Mass centre opened in 1967 in the New Invention area of Willenhall, West Midlands, was later rebuilt to a church and dedicated to Edmund Gennings.