The earliest documented Paley that I have on my tree doesn’t go quite as far back as 1246 and the reign of Edward Longshanks but to 1561 the early years of the reign of Good Queen Bess (Elizabeth I), when THOMAS PALEY married ELIZABETH PRESTON. Thomas would have probably been born around 1540 and, as he died in 1592, he would have lived to a reasonable age for those times. All their seven known children were born and bred in Giggleswick but only two were known to have married and had children.
ROBERT PALEY was born 1637 in Hubbercove, married MARGARET, produced five children and then died at the excellent age of 72, in Linton in Craven.. Of the five children, another ROBERT PALEY, born in 1677 at High Ing, met a young lady from Halton Gill, ISOBEL ELLISON, daughter of JOHN ELLISON and married her when he was 25 at Arncliffe. Robert had been baptized at Kirby Malham and the family were gradually radiating away from the Giggleswick area where their family had been for generations, most likely because they were the younger sons. All this time other Paleys continued to farm in the Giggleswick area.
Robert and Isobel had at least 7 children before Isobel died and Robert remarried. This time it was to an ELIZABETH GELDARD of Linton in Craven and their marriage took place in 1720 but there only appears to have been one child from that marriage, a daughter MARY who married a Henry Fletcher of Burnsall. Robert eventually died in Hubbercove/Threshfield in 1743, hopefully after 20 happy years with Elizabeth.
One of Robert and Isobel’s children was a daughter, Mary who was born in 1711 and, at the age of 21, she married a blacksmith, WILLIAM WOODLOVE.
One of these sons was, predictably, called JOHN, born in Threshfield in 1747and it was a relatively peaceful time for Britain. George II was on the throne and it would be almost another ten years before the country was embroiled in various of the wars of the Georgian era. John, however, was a farm labourer deep in Yorkshire and it is unlikely that much of the political landscape of that time had any real impact on his life.
In 1769, when JOHN was just 22, he married an ANNAS LODGE in Hubberholme. Interestingly enough, ten years earlier one of the Hebdens of Hubberholme had married an Elizabeth Lodge of Hubberholme. Perhaps she was Annas’s aunt ?
This group of Paleys had now made it to the Aysgarth area and John and Annas set about ensuring perpetuity of the name of Paley by producing four boys, John, Roger, Robert and William Lodge. They were living in High Foss, Walden for that is whre the two younger children were born and where JOHN died in 1807 aged 67.
Of the other sons, it is here that the lines start to get complicated so they have been separated into separate links
Roger senior, had three brothers
JOHN PALEY, (1772 - 1849 Aysgarth) married MARY WILSON on January 15, 1808.
Of the remaining children, only something is known of three of the sons.
ROGER PALEY (1771 - 1815 Aysgarth) married ANN FOSTER on September 29, 1798 in Hubberholme. They had four children, John who died in infancy, Ellen who was born in 1799 and went on to marry Anthony Willis in 1822
and
HENRY PALEY,( 1804 -. 1880) who married Margaret and had a son
ROGER JOHN PALEY who died aged 59 in 1890. He married MARY LAWSON in 1856 and they had three children,
WILLIAM LAWSON PALEY, b. 1860, MARGARET PALEY, b. 1862. and ROGER PALEY(1863-1916). This Roger. married HANNAH ELIZABETH SANDERSON in 1887 and they had a daughter Mary Elizabeth the following year. Mary died in 1975.. She had married Charles Barlow in 1911 and had a son Charles Frederick who died in 1996.
( It was descendants of this Roger who provided me with the majority of all this information on my Paley heritage)
ROBERT PALEY (1774- 1831, Walden) married SARAH and then HANNAH ROBINSON
And
WILLIAM LODGE PALEY.
(It is at this point that it starts to become rather complicated so the descendants of the last three names are split up on the appropriate name links.)