To all those who have replied with advice too date
many thanks to all .
I am absorbing all the advice received and will try and alter my strategy to suit.
with over 600 parishes in the 3 ridings --and a lack of parish records on free sites/ancestry my present focus is to narrow down the parishes to those where finding Thomas Hanley is more probable than others . I am aware that this may not find him --and that I will have to take a wider /different tack later.
So far all I know for certain is his marraige,--1728; his children ( names and births--hannah, thomas, william john, hannah ) , his spouse ( Emmet johnson) , that he came to sutton around 21 and was 25 in dec 1729--and that he died in sutton upon derwent . In 1739 in QSF/127/c/13 he was bound over to appear in the next qtr session of beverley for assault charge . That ( beverley) I can find no record of .
My initial thinking was that he must have been born close to the sutton parish .There were a few hanley birth pre 1700 s in york (st saviour) , thornton , pocklington, hemingbrough --all close --but nothing found in the parish records for the years 1700-1709.
if one considers that pre 1700 , for uncommon names -especially location names , and in a common area of the country --there is a fair chance that most people might be related --then my thinking is that the hanleys originated in the WR --perhaps around parishes around leeds, doncaster, wakefield
Given that thomas was an agricultural labourer --then at this stage ,whilst accepting longer distances of migration was not out of the question, it seems sensible to look first at parishes nearer to sutton upon derwent than far way-- I am think within 30/40kms.
My only other thought is how he met and married Emmet(emma) Johnson and wether finding her birthplace holds any clues to thomas. Unfortunately Johnson is a fairly common surname..