We use the term ‘hate crime’ to describe anything that happens to you because someone dislikes your ethnicity (Gypsy, Traveller and Roma are ethnicities); religion or belief; sexual orientation; gender identity; disability (including learning disability and mental health).

A hate crime could be:

Under Edward VI, so sickly king, fear of Mary as his heir who was Catholic, Edward often seen as dominated by his nobles as so young.

‘vagabonds, tellers of news, sowers of seditious rumours…’ Emphasis is on King as a representative of God but the vagabonds are undermining him. Responsible for ‘vicious livings and corrupt conversations’, spreading malicious rumours about the King and his court around the country.

1594

Those who claim to have served in war.

‘Idle vagabonds’

Fear of the Irish who have rebelled against the crown and who, now in England, intended to ‘endanger her majesties noble person’.

1597

Erection of Houses of Correction

Fear of beggars and ‘wandering persons’ who are ‘refusing to work for such reasonable wages as is taxed’.

1598

‘persons able in body but loitering’ as well as scholars, sailors, players, wizards etc.

1638

‘spreading and dispersing of the contagious infection of the plague over the whole kingdom’

Idea of those who are idle but should be working.

Also soldiers, mariners, pedlars, tinkers etc.