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marmaduke123
01-12-2008, 11:19 PM
I've been looking at the Calderdale FHS transcript of the early parish registers for Elland, West Yorkshire. There are two entries for baptisms in the late 1500s which puzzle me. They are apparently annotated in the original register as "verna", and the translation offered is "slave born in his master's household"

Has anyone come across this before? What would be the circumstances of such a record?

Anne

marmaduke123
02-12-2008, 12:35 PM
Hello Finbar

Thanks for your suggestion of "vernaculus". Having looked at the entries again, and the

dictionary meanings of vernaculus, I think it might be a polite way of indicating an

illegitimate child of the head of the household, or of one of his daughters. It was quite

some time later that "spurius" and "spuria" began to be used in Elland.

Anne