The Ranters were not an organised group or sect. The name is used as a generic term for the various self-proclaimed messiahs, prophets and preachers who emerged in England from the late 1640s until the mid-1650s as the turmoil of the civil wars subsided. The excesses of the Ranters became the subject of several prurient pamphlets and newspaper reports from 1650 onwards, prompting a wave of moral panic amongst clergymen, magistrates and MPs. Ranters were frequently accused of sexual immorality and associated with nudity, which they may have used as an extreme form of social protest, as well as a religious symbol of the abandonment of earthly goods.
Most of those identified as Ranters, such as Laurence Clarkson, Joseph Salmon and Jacob Bauthumley, had been soldiers in the New Model Army. Abiezer Coppe had been an Army chaplain. They all shared a sense of disillusionment at the betrayal of the Levellers' political and social aims. They embraced the concept of the Indwelling Spirit, claiming that anyone who had made a personal relationship with God was no longer bound by conventional society and that whatever was done in the Spirit was justifiable. This encouraged a sense of liberation from all legal and moral restraint. Organised forms of religion were rejected, the concept of sinfulness was dismissed and the Bible itself was disregarded. Free love, drinking, smoking and swearing were regarded as viable routes to spiritual liberation.
The Adultery Act, passed by the Purged Parliament in May 1650 and the Blasphemy Act of August 1650 were directly aimed at curbing the excesses of the Ranters and their followers. The most infamous Ranters were arrested and brought to trial. Jacob Bauthumley was bored through the tongue as punishment for writing a blasphemous book; Clarkson, Salmon and Coppe wrote recantations and were released after short spells in prison. Activity faded during the late 1650s and many former Ranters turned to Quakerism after the Restoration.