Although the crime of witchcraft was especially named in the colonial statutes, and the penalty of death imposed upon offenders, it was some time before a case was detected; and the early settlers seem usually to have acted most cautiously in this matter. Connecticut has the unenviable pre-eminence of having furnished the first victim, if Winthrop may be believed. He notes: “One of Windsor was arraigned and executed in Hartford for a witch” in March, 1646–7.[58] Then followed, in 1648, the execution of Margaret Jones at Charlestown, Mass., whose fate Winthrop also describes. She was tested according to the most approved maxims of witch-finders in England, being stripped and searched for witch-marks, or the teats by which it was believed the devil’s imps were nourished. The search paid no regard to decency, and when the inquisitors found some small excrescence they were fully satisfied of the guilt of the accused, and she was accordingly hanged.[59] In the same year the founders of the liberties of Connecticut put to death, at Hartford, one Mary Johnson, with whom, it is related, “Mr. Stone labored with such success that she died in penitence, confessing her abominable crimes of familiarity with the devil.”[60] In 1650, a Mistress Lake was hanged at Dorchester, and a Mistress Kendall at Cambridge, showing that not all the superstitious had migrated from those places to Hartford and Windsor.[61] In 1651, Mary Parsons of Springfield was hanged for infanticide; she was generally accused of being a witch, but on trial before the General Court was cleared, owing to the insufficiency of the testimony;[62] and Hugh Parsons, her husband, who was tried and found guilty by the Court of Assistants in 1652, was re-tried and acquitted by the General Court, “which, after perusing and considering the evidence, ... judged that he was not legally guilty of witchcraft, and so not to dye by law.”[63] These instances of careful examination, as well as the small number of the cases, show that in the first twenty-five years there was no general panic, and that the authorities were inclined to proceed with a deliberation which contrasts very favorably with the tone of feeling in England at this time. In 1651, Goodwife Bassett was hanged at Stratford,[64] and John Carrington and his wife of Wethersfield, probably at Hartford,[65] and in 1653, Goodwife Knapp suffered at Fairfield.[66] In Massachusetts there were no more cases until 1656, in which year Mistress Hibbins, a woman of position, whose husband had sat as an assistant at some of the earlier trials, was hanged in Boston. It is noticeable in her case that though the magistrates had refused to accept the verdict of the first jury that had found her guilty, the General Court, to whom the case came in regular course, condemned her.[67] Her execution shocked the wiser portion of the community, and even men of the narrow religious views of Norton and Wilson, though