This Member’s father, Benjamin Handley of Sleaford (b. 1754), was descended from an old Nottinghamshire family, being the youngest son of William Handley (1719-86) of Newark, a mason, who married Sarah, the daughter of Benjamin Farnworth of Sutton, a Newark stationer. He, who married into a Boston gentry family, had a son Benjamin, who was born late in 1785, but this child must have been dead by 1791, when another son of his was baptized Benjamin.
Henry Handley, the last of seven children, was briefly educated at Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, but apparently did not take his degree or practice as a barrister. Shortly after the end of the 1820 session, he was returned for Heytesbury, presumably by purchase, in place of one of the brothers of Sir William A’Court†, the proprietor. In the House he occasionally registered wayward votes, but generally sided with the Liverpool administration. He divided in defence of their conduct towards Queen Caroline, 6 Feb. 1821. He voted against Catholic claims, 28 Feb. 1821, and the Catholic peers bill, 30 Apr. 1822. He divided against repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., and parliamentary reform, 9 May, but for the forgery punishment mitigation bill, 23 May 1821. He voted against more extensive tax reductions to relieve distress, 11, 21 Feb. 1822. Opposing reduction of the salt duties, 28 Feb., he declared, in a maiden speech which was ridiculed by the radical John Wade,
notwithstanding the wild speculations which had been propagated, he could not think taxation the cause of, nor parliamentary reform the remedy for, the distress which existed. He was thoroughly convinced that the distress was almost solely and exclusively to be ascribed to excessive production.
Nevertheless, he voted in the majorities for reducing the number of junior lords of the admiralty, 1 Mar., and abolishing one of the joint-postmasterships, 2 May, and in the minority for total repeal of the salt duties, 3 June 1822. He divided against inquiry into the right of voting in parliamentary elections, 20 Feb., and reform of the Scottish representative system, 2 June 1823. He voted in the minority for reducing the import price of corn to 60s., 26 Feb., but against repealing certain taxes, 3, 16 Mar. He voted against repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., yet divided with opposition for inquiry into the legal proceedings against the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. He voted for the advanced Whig Sir William Amcotts Ingilby* at the Lincolnshire by-election in late 1823.
Handley divided against the usury bill, 27 Feb. 1824. He was in the minority for an advance of capital to Ireland, 4 May. He was a teller for the majority for the West India Company bill, 10 May. He objected to the warehoused wheat bill, 17 May, saying that it would be beneficial to the president of the board of trade William Huskisson’s Liverpool constituents, but would not help the general cause of agriculture, ‘since it would hold out an encouragement to foreign countries to deluge the British market with their corn’. He moved a wrecking amendment against its second reading, but withdrew it after further debate. He divided against condemning the trial of the Methodist missionary John Smith in Demerara, 11 June 1824. He voted against Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., and the Irish franchise bill, 26 Apr., and paired against the third reading of the relief bill, 10 May 1825. In committee on the corn laws, 2 May, he agreed with Huskisson’s proposal for a 10s. duty on bonded corn, but did ‘not approve the plan for importing wheat from Canada at the intended low duty’. He voted against the grant for the duke of Cumberland, 30 May. He was in the majority for the spring guns bill, 21 June 1825. His only other known votes in this Parliament were against the corn importation bill, 11 May, and for resolutions to curb electoral bribery, 26 May 1826. He left the House at the dissolution that summer.
Handley, who until then had lived in Sleaford, took up residence at Culverthorpe Hall at about the time of his marriage in 1825.
He signed the requisition for a Lincolnshire meeting to complain about agricultural distress, and, when the sheriff refused to give his permission, chaired an informal meeting, 8 Jan. 1830, which agreed to petition the Commons for a reduction of the beer and malt taxes.
it was impossible for the present system to continue long; the voice of the people must prevail; there was some ground of hope from the present House of Commons; they enjoyed a greater share of popularity; and he hoped those ministers who were rather for increasing than lessening the burdens of the people, would meet with something like a serious opposition.
Lincoln Herald, 1, 15 Oct. 1830.
In seconding the nomination of Amcotts Ingilby at the general election of 1831, he explained that
reform was once a wild and indefinite term; it comprised every change from the man who lent a tardy and unwilling vote to the disfranchisement of some petty detested borough, to him who went to the daring length of universal suffrage; thanks to His Majesty’s ministers, we have now a certain test by which we can separate the metal from the dross: will you support the bill, aye or no!
He made clear his own support for the Grey ministry’s reform bill, ‘which I believe firmly, while it secures the liberty of the people, will give support to the crown and stability to the established institutions of the country’.
According to James Grant, Handley, ‘a respectable speaker, but nothing more’, was
a tall, stout, good-looking man. He has a jolly, countrified countenance, with a complexion redolent of health. His face is full, and his features are regular and pleasing. His hair is of a light brown, and he sports a pair of whiskers of which any Spanish Don might be proud.
[J. Grant], Random Recollections of Lords and Commons (1838), ii. 138-40.
He died in June 1846, dividing his estate among his numerous children, but revoking the annuity that he had previously intended for Henry Handley Farrell, the natural son of one Mary Farrell, because he had ‘wilfully abandoned’ his profession.