Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Geare, Allan
GEARE, ALLAN (1622–1662), nonconformist divine, was born at Stoke Fleming, near Dartmouth, Devonshire, in 1622. Sir Richard Carew of Anthony, Cornwall, whose clerk he was, taught him Latin. Soon after the outbreak of the civil war he was sent to Holland with a grandson of Carew, and money and plate. On 30 Sept. 1643 he entered Leyden University (Leyden Students, Index Soc. p. 39), and after residing there for eight years graduated M.A., being subsequently admitted ad eundem at Oxford. On his return home he was chosen minister of St. Peter, Paul's Wharf, London, a preferment which he held for six years. He then removed to Woburn in Bedfordshire as chaplain to the Earl of Bedford, and stayed there about two years. In 1656 he was elected minister of St. Saviour, Dartmouth, but was ejected for nonconformity in 1662. Some of the magistrates informed against him for preaching on a Sunday after the churches had closed. He was summoned before the commissioners at Exeter in very severe weather, and caught a fever, from which he died towards the end of December 1662. He was buried in St. Saviour's churchyard, amid considerable opposition. By his marriage with a daughter of John Canne [q. v.], minister of the English independent congregation at Amsterdam, he had five children. When at Leyden he is said to have written a treatise against the baptists, but he had no concern in the works mentioned by Calamy, whose account of him is in other respects very inaccurate.
[Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial, 1802–3, ii. 16–18.]