ABSTRACT
The proliferation of satiric literature has often been cited as evidence of the widening split in English society, ultimately to end in civil war and the execution of Charles I. Elizabethan and Jacobean political and social satire. There is also continuity between the two centuries in the realm of social and political conflict, which is in vital respects related to economic history. The growth of Puritanism, emphasizing as it did the importance of the individual, his personal judgement and the rewards attending zealous right conduct, further contributed to a general movement of the subjects away from submissiveness and towards active participation in politics. Opposition appealed to their position as trustees of the country's good, a merely political argument in a dispute over law and rights, and they used this political argument to encroach on royal prerogative in foreign affairs and to justify new aggressive procedures.
