Edmund Gennings was born in 1567 at Lichfield in Staffordshire to an Anglican family. At the age of 16, Edmund converted to Catholicism under the influence of the recusant priest Richard Sherwood (whose service Edmund had entered as a page).
Edmund travelled to the continental English College at Rheims (the relocated English College at Douai, moved to Rheims 1578) to study for the Catholic priesthood. Ordained Catholic priest on March 18, 1590 at the young age of 22.
Edmund returned to England in 1590 as a secular Catholic recusant priest. On November 8, 1591 (the feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul), Edmund was arrested during a secret Mass at the London house of Swithun Wells (Catholic recusant layman) — the arrest that would produce the conjoint martyrdom of Edmund Gennings and Swithun Wells.
On December 10, 1591, Edmund was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Gray's Inn Fields — the execution site deliberately chosen outside the London house of Swithun Wells (to deter the London Catholic community).
Edmund was hanged, drawn, and quartered at 24 years of age, alongside Swithun Wells (hanged the same day at the same site for providing the Mass location).
Canonized on October 25, 1970 by Pope St. Paul VI.