I have been fortunate enough to have been given my PALEY ancestry by many other people but it runs to over 20 generations so, for these purposes, I am going to have to cut down on the Paley information provided.
In 1246 there is documentation placing an Adam de Palay at Paley Green in Giggleswick and from then on there have been Paleys in the Gigglewick area. For a few years I even lived in Giggleswick myself never imagining that I had long standing family links with the area and that my forebears had helped shape the picturesque village that stands there today.

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.

St Alkeda's, Giggleswick

RICHARD PALEY was the eldest and married an ELIZABETH BAYSTON and had a child THOMAS whilst the third son, CHRISTOPHER, who was born in 1564, entered Cambridge University at the age of 16 and achieved a BA in 1583 and an MA in 1587. He later went on to marry and had a son ADAM who was born in 1584.
ADAM went on to marry ISABEL and they had a son JOHN.
By now we have reached the fifth generation with JOHN’s son CHRISTOPHER. It isn’t known where or when CHRISTOPHER was born but he married twice, first to a HESTER BOLTON in 1633 and then to a MARY HOWLEGATE in 1636.
Christophers marriage to Hester would appear to have been childless but there were at least three for his marriage to Mary but the name of only one is known - ROBERT .

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.
Of the remaining children, only something is known of three of the sons.
married Mary Brown and had two sons, William and Robert CHRISTOPHER PALEY, b. 1704 married Mary Mason and had William. JOHN PALEY, b. 1703 in Hubbercove grew up to be an Innkeeper in Linton in Craven where he was eventually buried, having died in Skirethornes in 1757. He was the most prolific of the sons and married twice. The first was to THOMASINA and produced a son Robert. His second marriage to ANN SHAKLETON ( a Kirby Malham lass) in 1730 in Linton in Craven produced seven children, five girls and two boys.

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 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)

Roger senior, had three brothers JOHN PALEY, (1772 - 1849 Aysgarth) married MARY WILSON on January 15, 1808.
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.)