ABSTRACT
The nobility and the gentry were vital to the governance of England in thesixteenth century; the alliance between the Crown and the nobility was funda - mental to the maintenance of order and the practice of government. For many years, the nobility and gentry were curiously neglected in the historiography of Elizabethan England, but recently this has changed, and historians are moving towards a more sensitive and more subtle appreciation of their role in Tudor society and government.
