Ranters
Ranters,a miscellaneous sect of heretical Puritan extremists whose heresies, which mushroomed in the late 1640s and early 1650s, were founded on the Inner Light and included freedom from the moral law (antinomianism), community of goods and women, abolition of tithes, the futility of the Bible, the non-existence of hell, the excellence of tobacco and alcohol, and mystical Pantheism (Jacob Bauthumley's ‘God in an ivy-leaf’). Notorious Ranters included L. Clarkson , A. Coppe , Richard Coppin , and Joseph Salmon . Hack-writers exploited their reputation for orgiastic sex by inventing sensational reports, leading some modern historians to claim that ‘there was no Ranter movement’ ( J. C. Davis , Fear, Myth and History). However, C. Hill has written persuasively about their revolutionary anarchism in The World Turned upside down ( 1972 ).
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