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You wrote:

"Murder is murder."

And you know that the intent of every execution performed after an inquisition trial was murderous? You have a source for this?

"If one middle class Jew were killed by the Nazis for being Jewish and another middle class Jew was killed for being bourgeois, both men were just as dead, irrespective of the ideology."

And that would certainly be murder. Now, if a man was executed for spreading heresy, even after being tried for that already, is that murder? No.

"Thomas More and Edward Campion were murdered by government courts as much as were Thomas Cramner and Nicholas Ridley."

Incorrect. The courts that tried Campion and More were manifestly corrupted by the monarch's power. The two Protestants you mentioned were not tried in the same way, same manner, with the same intent. Queen Mary also did not corrupt the court that tried them. Were they tortured as Campion was? I doubt it. Were they denied counsel as Campion was? No. Were they forced to participate in debates as Campion was? No. Campion had always wanted the debates, but never expected to get them only after being tortured and deprived of books, pens and paper. Campion won anyway.

"The fact remains that neither Catholics nor Protestants acted in a Christian manner toward one another or toward non-believers, e.g., the persecution of Jews and Muslims in Spain and Luther's anti-Semitic rants."

It is true that both Catholics and Protestants failed to be what they should be. The difference is that the Catholic Church was started by Christ, and was still holy no matter what the failing of its members. The Protestant sects were started by men, and were often created with the very needs of persecution in them. Is it not true that anti-Catholicism was at the very heart of some of the creeds, confessional and statements of Protestantism?

"Most governments of this era were authoritarian in any case, more like modern day dictatorships than representative governments."

In some ways that is true.

I stand by my statement, murder is murder. The primary definition of murder, given by Merriam Webster On-line Dictionary is: "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought." The statutes permitting the government of England to execute heretics upon conviction were established in positive law, but so were the statutes permitting the Soviet government to execute dissidents during Stalin's purges of the military and the Communist Party, for example. As for intent, when the English government was in the hands of Catholics, Protestant doctrine was heretical and subject to the death penalty, as was the case in the reverse. Of course, More, Campion, Cranmer, and Ridley were guilty under the laws of England under Protestant and Catholic interpretation, respectively. Whether the Catholics were nicer to Cranmer than the Protestants were to Campion is irrelevant. At least More was beheaded rather than barbecued.

Executing your religious opponents for heretical opinions is murder, irrespective of the coloring of the law. It is of the same order as Stalin killing Old Bolsheviks, kulaks, and religious adherents. As the 19th Century Anglican Bishop J.K. Ryle put it, it was a barbarous age.