III.
151-152) run mad, with touches from FAMILISM and SEEKERISM greatly vulgarized.

Of no sect do we hear more in the pamphlets and newspapers between 1650 and 1655, though there are traces of them of earlier date.

The pamphlets about them generally take the form of professed accounts of some of their meetings, with reports of their profane discourses and the indecencies with which they were accompanied.

There are illustrative wood-cuts in some of the pamphlets; and, on the whole, I fancy that some low printers and booksellers made a trade on the public curiosity about the Ranters, getting up pretended accounts of their meetings as a pretext for prurient publications.

There is plenty of testimony, however, besides Baxter's word, that there was a real sect of the name pretty widely spread in low neighbourhoods in towns, and holding meetings.