Elizabeth I wasn’t much better than Mary. Her target was priests and Catholic worshippers.
At least Liz the First wasn’t paranoid. The Catholics really were out to get her.
Considering they were allying with Spain to take her throne and have her killed should she have served them tea and cookies?
But according to Blackadder II, Elizabeth said that all the Catholics were demanding to have their heads nicked off!
Elizabeth 1 didn’t persecute Catholics until several attempts on her life had been made.
“In the belief that the revolt had been successful, Pope Pius V issued a bull in 1570, titled Regnans in Excelsis, which declared “Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime” to be excommunicated and a heretic, releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her. Catholics who obeyed her orders were threatened with excommunication.
The papal bull provoked legislative initiatives against Catholics by Parliament, which were, however, mitigated by Elizabeth’s intervention.
In 1581, to convert English subjects to Catholicism with “the intent” to withdraw them from their allegiance to Elizabeth was made a treasonable offence, carrying the death penalty. From the 1570s missionary priests from continental seminaries came to England secretly in the cause of the “reconversion of England”. Many suffered execution, engendering a cult of martyrdom.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I_of_England