While the delirium of witchcraft was raging in Europe,—until its victims numbered tens of thousands and its votaries millions,—the fever spread across the ocean and the New England colonists also fell a prey to the superstition. The fear of witchcraft and sorcery seized the multitudes in the United States, in the middle of the seventeenth century and supposed criminals were arrested in such numbers that the prisons were not large enough to hold them. The persecutions at Salem, Massachusetts, lasted from February until September, 1692, during which time, nineteen supposed witches were hung, fourteen of them being women.[36] Under the early statutes of New York and Pennsylvania, witchcraft was a capital offense.[37] The good William Penn, who fled from similar persecution in England, presided in the “City of Brotherly Love,” at the trial of two Swedish women, who were arraigned for witchcraft. The funeral pile had been prepared and the flint and tinder were all ready to burn them, but fortunately they were acquitted of the charge.[38] In Connecticut and Massachusetts, the penalty for witchcraft was death and the laws of these states were based not only upon the Mosaic code, but upon the Common Law of England, as well. A few trials occurred in Virginia and Maryland and six persons were hung, in Connecticut, for witchcraft, during the last half of the seventeenth century. Margaret Jones was executed for witchcraft, in Boston, in June, 1648; Mary Parsons, of Springfield, Massachusetts, was tried and convicted, in 1651; Mrs. Ann Hibbins was executed in Boston, in 1656, and Goody Glover was executed at the same place, in 1688.[39] The history of the persecutions at Salem, Massachusetts, has furnished the basis for several books, presenting the harrowing details of the trial of the several victims of the crusade against the delusion of witchcraft, at that place.[40] The Salem persecutions began with the delusions of a party of young girls, who imagined they were bewitched. Elizabeth Parris, aged nine, the daughter of Rev. Samuel Parris, her cousin, Abigail Williams, aged eleven, Ann Putnam, aged twelve, the daughter of the parish clerk, Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard and several other girls furnished the evidence upon which these persecutions were begun. After reading of witchcraft and magic, these children, who had worked themselves into a state of nervous excitement, began to cut queer antics, such as hiding in holes; crawling under chairs; assuming odd postures and uttering loud and incoherent expressions, all of which they attributed to the supernatural power exerted over them by three women of the neighborhood, Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn and an Indian woman named Tituba. Acting under the license of witchcraft, these girls disturbed religious worship, at will and performed other little misdemeanors, which their doting parents laid to the door of the witches, instead of correcting them, as they should have done.