While Mary Tudor burnt poor and humble persons who could be no possible danger to the State because they would not renounce the only form of Christian faith they had ever known, Elizabeth executed for treason powerful and influential men sent by the Pope to kill her.

When, after many long years, she reluctantly consented to Mary Stuart's death on the scaffold, Mary had been implicated in a plot to take her life and succeed her as queen.

Mary would have made much shorter work of her.

If that is called persecution, the word ceases to have any meaning.
Froude quotes with approval, as well he might, the words of Campian's admiring biographer Richard Simpson, himself a Catholic, a most learned and accomplished man.

"The eternal truths of Catholicism were made the vehicle for opinions about the authority of the Holy See which could not be held by Englishmen loyal to the Government; and true patriotism united to a false religion overcame the true religion wedded to opinions that were unpatriotic in regard to the liberties of Englishmen, and treasonable to the English Government." In those days there was only one kind of English Government possible; the Government of Elizabeth, Burghley, and Walsingham.