The Reformation, of course, came to a standstill in Ireland, during this queen’s reign, but the plunder and persecution of the Irish people did not, therefore, abate. There were raids and massacres and confiscations, as usual. Of course there were bloody reprisals on the part of the Irish, also—as was but natural. Some of the old Irish districts—particularly Leix and Offaly—were, under the sway of Mary, called the King’s and Queen’s Counties—the chief town of the one being named Philipstown, after the queen’s Spanish husband, and the capital of the other Maryborough, after herself. The Irish Reformers “laid low,” as was prudent in them, during Mary’s period of power, because she had the unpleasant Tudor habit of putting to death, by divers violent modes of punishment, those who presumed to differ from her rather strong opinions. The English, who sincerely rejoiced when, after reigning about five years, she passed to her account, nicknamed her “Bloody Mary,” although she was not a whit “bloodier” than her awful father, and had a very formidable rival for sanguinary “honors” in her younger half-sister, Elizabeth. Mary Tudor was the last _avowed_ Catholic monarch who reigned in England, except the ill-fated James II. In this reign, the English law of primogeniture was first generally introduced into the Celtic districts annexed to the Pale, which had been divided into “shire-ground,” and this was the cause of much internal disorder among the Irish tribes that clung to the old elective system of chieftaincy.