The following is extracted from an e-mail written by Jack Handley on a Handley Genealogy forum:

Subject: Handleys/Handley in Ireland
Author: Jack Handley Date: 7 Jan 2000 8:12 AM GMT

The Handleys in Ireland should be looked in context with the English History in Ireland. The English under Srongbow ( Richard de Clare Earl of Pembroke) and Fitzgerald in August 1170 who conquered Leinster from Waterford to Dublin. Strongbow married Dermont King of Leinster's daughter and was recognized as his heir. After a rebellion Henry II crossed over to Ireland in September 1171 and a conference at Cashel the Celtic Bishops and lords of Ireland recognized Henry and his heirs as King of Ireland. The canons issued by the council put into force the rules of marriage and morals long established by the rest of Christendom. A report was sent to the Pope and a reply dated 20 September 1172 accepted all that was agreed. Meath was granted to Stongbow and he was made the governor of Dublin and Justicar and Waterford and Wexford made domain towns just like New York Boston etc when the English settle in the USA. Strongbow had 50 knights one of, which raised from the Welsh Borders (Worcestershire) Lord Hannerly whose descendants dropped the H., and like Strongbow became Norman Irish.

Note he could have been a son of Gilbert de Hanley of Hanley Hall Pershore 1185.

In 1177 the Pope Alexander III gave Henry permission to crown one of his son King of Ireland and appointed more Norman Barons Lordships in Cork and Limerick. Henry proposed John but his first visit to Ireland with a large force of 60 ships men at arms and foot soldiers proved unsuccessful and he was unfit to rule anyone which resulted in the English forcing him to sign Magna Carta on 15 June 1215. John was never crowned King of Ireland. When John became King of England he carried out many reforms of taxation and law one of which was to require the common people to adopt surnames. John returned to Ireland in 20/6/1210 with an army paid by scutage of 10,000 marks and met no opposition from the Norman Irish he introduced English Laws and administrative system and appointed Sheriffs.

For the next 250 years English rule in Ireland was confined to the West Coast and Dublin was in land the Norman Irish and Irish Barons held sway ruling vast areas of land and feuding. The English were engaged in France Scotland and Wales leaving Ireland to look after itself. The Anglo-Norman's were not permitted to marry the native Irish by law this lead to a situation were the nation was divided between Catholic Normans and native Celts both of which were against the English in 1375. In 1382 Richard II landed in Ireland with an army of 4000 lances at Waterford and marched to Dublin and won over the Irish and the Norman Barons who had become Irish adopting their dress language and customs. In a latter visit in 1398 he was not so successful taking with him a large army and all his supporters he failed to defeat the Irish rebels and lost England to Henry IV. For the next 60 years the English army conquered and annexed Wales was engaged in a war with France, which ravaged France until they were defeated at Formingny in 24/6/1450. From this war English learnt although you can win every battle you cannot occupy a country if the population is against you which was recognized by the administration after the American War of Independance and when each of the subsequent colonies they asked for independence it was granted. After they lost France their followed a savage civil war of 25 years were the army divided between two families and ended with the death Richard III in 1485 and the victory of Henry VII.

On 13/9/1494 Sir Edward Poyning went to Ireland and landed at Howth on 13/10/1494 with a force of 1000 men he reached the O'Hanlon county when Irish Lords started to plot against him he demonstrated his power by the reduction of Carlow. He called a parliament at Drogheda were he revoke all royal grants made in the last 168 years and declare it illegal to wage war or keep arms or pillage the poor to support their retainers. In the Statute of Kildare he reaffirmed the use of English and English ways in the Pale. He also made all Irish laws passed by their parliament had to be approved by the king in England because the Irish Parliament had passed an act recognizing Perkin Warbeck as King of England. Poyning Law proved to be the root of all England's latter troubles in Ireland. Due to lack of money Poyning paid his soldiers by gifts of small plots of land which paved the way for the end of the Celtic Christianity and the adoption of Catholic Religion by the Irish. These battle scared veterans in Poyning's English army could have contained the Earl of Warwick's HANLEYs from Yorkshire and Warwick.

Henry also passed an act, which forbid the Irish from trading directly with other countries in 1487 and this act was extended in 1503, and was the principle reason which latter prevented the industrialization of Ireland.

During Henry VIII time government of Ireland was limited to the Pale around Dublin and the west coast and even in the Pale the gentlemen intermarried with the native stock and great landlords were absentees and ceased to keep English yeoman in their households. The government had no maps of the country, and no knowledge of the its size of its population. Most of Ireland was ruled by ancient tribal customs. In 1536 Lord Grey landed in Ireland to put down a Catholic revolt led by Kildare and the Geraldines. Henry's suppression of their catholic masters of Ireland wounded the religious sentiments of the Irish people. This led to the Pope sending Jesuit mission to Ireland in 1542 and the subsequent conversion to Catholicism of the Irish people from their native Celtic religion at a time when the English were coverted to Protestant Anglican Religion.

Only when Elizabeth I came to the throne did the English extend their influence in Ireland to beyond the Pale forcing the clans to adopt its laws and customs and ending intertribal wars Wolfe was sent to Ireland by Puis IV in 1560 and succeeded where other Jesuits had failed and Roman Catholicism grew rapidly till in 1574 it reached a level where open revolt was supported by outside catholic powers. One effect of this resistance was a law passed in 1582 which prevented the Irish from acquiring grants of land by sale alienation of planters or heiresses who married Irish husbands thus creating second class citizens. All this resistance was encouraged by Spain and led to a national revolt in 1599. The Earl of Essex as commander of Ireland led an army of 16,000 foot and 1,300 horse, which lasted until 1603. The English settle English landlords in Ireland and ended up by having to buy them out needless to say the soldiers were paid with grants of land and of them the Handley's raised from all areas of England.

When James I came to the throne the Scots gained official access to Northern Ireland which they had occupied before the English came to Ireland and had maintain a presence over years sometimes supporting the Irish Rebels and sometime seeking refuge when the English occupied Scotland.

The plantations of Elizabeth I and James I the English settlers soon became more Irish than the Irish and often had their lands confiscated. James at first allowed the Irish to have freehold and in 1607 tried to break the existing extended tenancy with obligations to the clan and its chiefs. In Ulster manors of 1000 acres were offered to English and Scottish Protestants provided they allow no Irish to dwell on them. In the south the were offered first to the English and if there was no takers then to the Irish. The Ulster plantation was formed at the same time as those in Virginia.

Charles I also followed this policy. But in 1627 he allowed the Catholics to office and removed the bar on them owning land. However his minister Wentworth could not resolve the differences between Protestants and Catholics. By 1640 the divisions and natural fear and abhorrence with regard the Scottish Covenanters in Northern Ireland could not be resolved and still haunts today.

In 1640 Charles tried to raise an army in Ireland to suppress the English Parliament which caused the civil war.

Meanwhile Wentworth had plan to extend the plantations in Ireland and seize large tracts of land from the Irish this caused an Irish rebellion 23/10/1641 were English power was overthrown in three-fourths of Ireland. The King asked parliament for money to raise and army to crush to rebellion but parliament didn't trust him and he tried to arrest members of parliament, which resulted a civil war. Meanwhile the Irish Catholics declared in favour of Charles and Country and won a free parliament from Charles in 1643. Once England was secure under Parliament Cromwell took the army to Ireland together with the Scottish Army under General Monk. On 1/9/1649 he led an army 10,000 men he took Drogheda and rapidly subdued Wexford, Youghall with a declaration of Cork for parliament. After a break of one month Cromwell complete the conquest of Ireland by 9/5/1650. Being a pragmatist he allowed toleration of Catholics. The war had reduced the country to starvation and ruin. In order to pay for the army the government took all the land owned by catholic Anglo-Irish landowning families and sold it of Protestants or shared it out between officers and men. The recipients were not allowed to sell the land back to Catholics, which had happened with previous armies. The dispossessed were banished to land in Connaught on the other side of the Shannon and those who resisted were transported to the West Indies ( Barbadoes). The English were careful not to remove Irish families who they needed to work the land only the Scots in Ulster did that.

Joseph Hanly of 26 Lower Gardiner St Dublin has serveral deeds regarding the disposal of land.

It seams that the inhabitants of East Meath, Kildare, Queens County, and Dublin were sent into the Baronies of Roscommon and Ballintobber, in the half barony of Bellamo and the Barony of Boyle in the county of Roscomman. This included many Irish widows of English extraction . After the restoration in 1660 many of the big landowners got their land back and the new tenants dispossessed but not the less well off. I assume that the Handley's of Roscommon fell under that category.

After James II was removed General Monk settled his army in Ulster and moved out the Irish to the center of Ireland., and as a result of the rebellion against William III and Mary many of the reforms carried out by Cromwell who gave the Catholics the vote were removed and not restored until William Pitt past the Act of Union in 1801. In a letter written by Pitt in 1800 he says the Protestants are not happy unless the Catholics are completely subservient which still is true in Northern Ireland today.

In the Potato Famine in 1845-51 Ireland suffered badly due to the lack of industrialization. The potato crop failed all over Europe including in England. The advent of a rudimentary railway system and canals made it possible to transport food into those areas in Europe which were badly hit. In Ireland the bad weather and poor roads made transport extremely difficult. The Government carried out a road building program to improve the situation together with shipment of large amounts of food from Liverpool. Much of this grain was re-exported by corrupt Irish Merchants in Dublin and not sent to the staving people on the West Coast of Ireland.

In the Census returns of England Wales and Scotland together with records of births marriages and deaths show in 1998 about 11,000 Handleys 5800 Hanleys and 320 Hanlys. From the 1881 census show large numbers of Irish people who have come over to England and of the Recorded number Handley's (5333) 145 were born in Ireland and 295 of Irish descent; of the Handlys (275) 11 were born in Ireland and 35 of Irish descent; of the Hanley's (2397) 357 were born in Ireland and 765 of Irish descent; and of the Hanly's (149) 48 were born in Ireland and 83 of Irish descent.