One of the most exciting things to emerge from the Bonsall History Project was the re-discovery in the Public Record Office of a schedule of the people who rented land in Bonsall from the Duchy of Lancaster (the lord of the manor and principal landowner in the village for most of the Middle Ages and early modern times). Cameron, in his book on Derbyshire place-names, had obviously used this document, as a number of the field names he identified relate directly to it, but historians had been unaware of its contents. It seems to have been drawn up in February 1414/15 as a result of the Duchy authorities having lost track of who occupied what on its holdings and they were clearly involved in a rent review. At the time of the publication of this booklet much work still needs to be done in evaluating the document, but already it has shed some light on the size of the village in the early fifteenth century, and on some of the people who lived in it.
Initial indications would suggest that there could have been around fifty families living in Bonsall in 1415, giving it a population of between 200 and 250. This would be a significant increase over the period since the Lay Subsidy Roll of 1328, perhaps suggesting that our estimate of the size of the village in 1328 is an underestimate, but more likely indicating that the development of lead mining in the fourteenth century saw an influx of people into Bonsall. Most of the names in the list of tenants are unfamiliar, although of the families who live in the village today the names of 'Batheley' (Batterley), Webster, Persson (Pearson) and Taillour (Taylor) appear. Also mentioned are 'John del Dale', no doubt describing where a particular individual named John lived, and John and Nicholas Moubray, who might well have lived on the site of the present Mowbray Farm. Intriguingly there is also mention of an 'Adam Scole maistre', although there is no particular evidence which would point to his being a schoolmaster in Bonsall, or that a school existed at this particular time. The village also seems to have boasted a mill, a forge or smithy and a furnace, possibly associated with the lead mining.
The rental also records the amount of farmland that was under plough at the time, although it does not necessarily include all the land in the parish of Bonsall. What is clear, however, is that agriculture was still the mainstay of village life, 400 acres of land being used for arable cultivation - a sign that, in food production at least, Bonsall in the fifteenth century would have been highly self-sufficient. This means that the average size of a holding in Bonsall would have been about 8 acres per household, although some people would have been renting quite small plots while others would have had significant holdings. John Hynd jr., for example, besides renting the forge and 3 parcels of waste, also rented 30 acres of farmland, for which he paid an annual rent of three shillings, plus two capons at Christmas. 5d or 6d per acre seems to have been the average annual rent, so John Hynd either got a very good deal or the land he was renting was not of a very high quality.
Not all the land was arable. John Adamson, for example, rented an acre of meadow, while the inhabitants of Ible, along with the Abbey of Buildwas in Shropshire, had grazing rights on Bonsall Moor.
The list of tenants referred to in the 1415 return