In your opinion, which of the reasons discussed (The Great Famine, the Hundred Years War, the development of the Gutenberg Printing Press, the Bubonic Plague, and the Great Schism) most contributed to a breakdown in society that brought an end to the Middle Ages, leading to the Renaissance?

In my opinion it would be the Bubonic Plague.

Explanation:

The Bubonic Plague that struck Europe in the middle of 14th Century devastated European population. People lost their faith in the role of certain institutions, especially Church and realized that the Church cannot protect them. As many died, need for peasants who were work on the manors increased, but now the peasants had the opportunity to claim certain rights. Additionally, people realized they need to change their way of thinking and functioning and they were to prevent these things to happen.

most people were factory or company owners.

john smith was the first englishman to sail around the world. francis bacon served as attorney general and lord chancellor of england. he took up aristotelian ideas, arguing for an empirical, inductive approach, known as the scientific method, which is the foundation of modern scientific inquiry.