Harsh as that law was, the Catholics obeyed it; yet even this obedience did not satisfy the Protestant party, or rather that portion of them who were active agents in carrying out this imprudent and unjustifiable rigor at such a period.
They were seized by a kind of panic, and imagined forsooth that a broken down and disarmed people might engage in a general massacre of the Irish Protestants.

Whether this incomprehensible terror was real, is a matter of doubt and uncertainty; or whether it was assumed as a justification for assailing the Catholics in a general massacre, similar to that which they apprehended, or pretended to apprehend, is also a matter of question; yet certain it is, that a proposal to massacre them in cold blood was made in the Privy Council.

"But," says O'Connor, "the humanity of the members rejected this barbarous proposal, and crushed in its infancy a conspiracy hatched in Lurgan to extirpate the Catholics of that town and vicinity." In the meantime, so active was the persecuting spirit of such men as Whitecraft and Smellpriest that a great number of the unfortunate priests fled to the metropolis, where, in a large and populous city, they had a better chance of remaining _incogniti_ than when living in the country, exposed and likely to be more marked by spies and informers.

A very dreadful catastrophe took place about this time.

A congregation of Catholic people had heard mass upon an old loft, which had for many years been decayed--in fact, actually rotten.