With the notable exceptions of the martyrdom of Cuthbert Mayne and several others the bloody persecution of Catholics under Queen Elizabeth I did not begin in earnest until more than 20 years into her reign.
The frenzy of persecution was triggered by real conspiracies to remove the Queen, by her excommunication by Pope Pius V and by the hysteria that accompanied the arrival of the Jesuit St Edmund Campion on the English Mission in 1580.
St Edmund and his colleagues brought to an end prevailing confusion over whether Catholics could in good conscience obey laws that compelled them to attend new Anglican services.
[2] A convert, he worked as a schoolmaster in London,[3] then as servant to Dr Thomas Stapleton in Douai, before entering the seminary in 1576, where he was ordained a subdeacon.
[5] He was one of 20 who stood trial in Westminster Hall, London, for treason in the fictitious "Rome and Rheims Plot" against Queen Elizabeth I.