This is a very rare English surname. It is by the spelling clearly locational from some place called Loyley or similar, except that no such place unless it be Lawley in Salop (Shropshire), bears any serious resemblance to it. This would suggest that either Loyley is a form of Lawley or it it from some other now probably 'lost' medieval village of which the only surviving memory is the surname itself. Lawley means 'The settlement or farm of Lafa', the latter being an early personal name, and is first recorded as Lavelie in the famous Domesday Book of 1086. Locational surnames are usually 'from' names. That is to say names given to people after they left their original homesteads to move somewhere else. It is possible that original Lawley name holders could have moved right across country to Lincolnshire where they became Loyley's since in 1668 we have the recording of George Loyley who married Grace Williamson at South Somercoates on October 1st of that year. More usually people who left their origoinal villages went to London, but in this case the name does not appear to be recorded there at all until as late as 1860. The first recording of Lawley may be that of George Lawley, given as being of Shropshire, a student at Oxford University in 1595.

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