breif overview

• Social tensions still simmering from Henry VIII (Pilgrimage of Grace)
• Unpopular acts (sheep tax, vagrancy act) were repealed
• 1549 can be argued as the worst year of the Tudor period
• Government brought in greater censorship and gave local authorities more power
• Causes of Rebellions

  • Religion
  • Agrarian and social grievances (report of riots and uprooting enclosures)
  • Taxation
• Rebellions lacked support
• Decisive actions from nobility, e.g. Earl of Arundel in Sussex
• Also rebellions occurred in Cambridgeshire
• Roger Turvey

  1549 rebellions were not so much social, economic or religious, mainly to do with succession, landowning political nation were concerned about having a child king and fear of him being succeeded by a female monarch
• Religious change

  Impact of change was short and profound, English population subjected to too much religious change too quickly, disorientating and confusing
• When examining the 1549 rebellions


  It is surprising that there weren't more disruptions
• Somerset government


  Found it difficult to cope, the rebellions of 1549 helped bring aristocracy government and gentry together