No, they did not think planets (as you understand the term) were stars. The definition of "planet" was "a star that moves from one constellation to another". Which is exactly what anyone who studied the sky before there were any telescopes would see when they looked at Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn in the night sky.
It was only when Galileo, using a crude telescope, discovered the phases of Venus, that it became known that Venus does not shine of its own light and is therefore not a star.
Soon this was discovered to be true of all planets. It still took another two hundred years before anyone called the Earth a planet. It takes time to process new knowledge.
And just how does this affect the theory of evolution which has nothing to say about planets or stars?
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