<<I have a transcript of the burial record of Constantia FUSDALE in Alrewas, Staffordshire, in 1612, and appended to her name is the phrase 'quedam serva.'. This has been translated as 'a certain servant or protector'. Is there any reason why this phrasing was used, rather than just 'a servant'? Or is it that the translation is incorrect?>> At this date 'serva' would most likely have meant servant (in the sense of employee of any sort - not necessarily a house-servant). Medieval and early modern sources often describe a person or thing as 'quidam' (fem. quedam) in circumstances in which we would nowadays regard the word as superfluous to the sentence. It is best translated as 'certain', but often if you just leave it out you will get the sense of the sentence perfectly. Alternatively, it may be that the word was 'quondam', with the 'n' omitted and replaced by a short horizontal stroke above the word as a contraction mark (o and e were sometimes written very similarly) - which means 'formerly', so she would have been a former servant. Matt Tompkins Blaston, Leics