12:05pm UK, Thursday November 30, 2006

People in 17th Century England had many more reasons to fear for their mortality than their modern counterparts.

Along with common-or-garden ailments they had to contend with death from witchcraft, spirits and fairies as well.

witch skeleton 17th century deaths

1600s were superstitious times

They are all causes of death uncovered in a historic manuscript seen for the first time in hundreds of years.

The document is from the burial register for the parish of Lamplugh in Cumbria in the mid 1600s.

It reveals the deeply superstitious - and often brutal - side of life in the England of Oliver Cromwell.

Four people were "frightened to death by fairies".

Another died after being "led into a horse pond by a will of the whisp".

And seven more passed away after becoming "bewitched".

Those believed to possess supernatural powers fared little better - three "old women" were drowned after being tried for witchcraft.

Anne Rowe, of the Cumbria Archive Service, said: "I've never come across anything like it before."

She added: "These were insecure social times with many a natural death being put down to the evil witchcraft of a harmless old widow."

Justice was brutal too with hanging the common punishment for even minor offences.

But some things haven't changed - drunken fights were sometimes fatal, while the most common cause of death was plain old age.