CLAXTON, LAURENCE

born 1615, Preston, Lancashire, Eng. died 1667, London Claxton also spelled Clarkson preacher and pamphleteer, leader of the radical English religious sect known as the Ranters. Originally a tailor by trade, Claxton sampled many Protestant denominations before joining the Baptists in 1644. His first tracts, The Pilgrimage of Saints and Truth Released, appeared in 1646. He first came into contact with the Ranters in 1649 in London and quickly adopted their tenets, including the extreme beliefs that a believer is free from all traditional restraints, that sin is a product only of the imagination, and that private ownership of property is wrong. He espoused Ranter ideas in his tract A Single Eye (1650). In about 1658 he was converted to another extremist Puritan sect, the Muggletonians. He died in debtor's prison.