oh, former Episcopalian/Anglican here, too.
Ok, like I said. Look up the 40 martyrs. Look up the Catholic Empancipation act. There is plenty of evidence that Catholics were persecuted in England as an attempt to convert the populace by force. This was wrong.
England was Catholic, and quite happily so prior to Henry VIII. That is my contention. It wasn’t the Catholics who attempted to exterminate English protestants, quite the reverse.