Ava Dunning
To assess the importance of landed groups in maintaining political stability we much define what is meant by landed groups. It can be defined as people that own significant amounts of land. This includes the nobility, gentry, church and yeomen. Each group has varied importance when it comes to maintaining stability as they have different levels of power within society. It is also difficult to decide if they improved stability or disrupted it, for example many rebellions were led and supported by the nobility.
The nobility were important in maintaining political stability as the Crown relied heavily on them for many different purposes, …show more content…
The Church owned vests amounts of land and money, which inevitably attracted power. Furthermore, religion was hugely important and prominent in everyday life during the Tudor period. The church was able to influence what people believed through preaching. Furthermore the church even had some influence over the monarch so it could be argued that they were very important in upholding political stability and they had influence over the monarch who was the most important when it came to making political decisions as everything passed through them.
However during the reign of Henry VIII the power of the church and subsequently their influence decreased as a result of the split with Rome and Henry making himself head of the Church of England. Furthermore the instability of England’s religious policy throughout the reigns of Edward to Elizabeth also meant that the church had less power and influence of the political stability. It could be argued that the Church throughout the later years of the Tudor reign was the cause of political