John Geree (c. 1600 – February, 1649) was an English Puritan clergyman preacher, and author of several tracts engaging in theological and political issues of the day, who was silenced for nonconformism but later reinstated.
[5] John Geree made an early appearance in print in 1625, with a dedicatory epistle to the collected lectures of William Pemble of Magdalen Hall, published after his death as Vindiciae Fidei: A Treatise of Justification by Faith.
For refusal to conform to ceremonies of the Church of England he was silenced by Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, and was reduced to living 'by the helps of his brethren.
With these credentials he was proposed, examined, and appointed to officiate the Cure of St Albans in Hertfordshire early in 1645/6,[11] and his The Character of an Old English Puritane, or Non-Conformist appeared in 1646.
[12] The Baptist movement was very active in north-western Hertfordshire: Geree's Vindiciae Paedo-Baptismi and Vindiciae Vindiciarum (dedicated to the Mayor and Burgesses of St Albans) were directed against the arguments of his former fellow-student John Tombes (whom he calls his 'ancient friend'), and of Edward Harrison of Kensworth, who was effectively founder of the St Albans Baptists.
A determined opponent of Episcopacy, in 1646 he also published A Case of Conscience Resolved, to prove that the King could consent to its abolition without breaking his Coronation Oath.
He produced a fourth edition of William Fenner's The Spirituall Mans Directorie, with his own preface of recommendation, enlarged tables and notes for the illiterate.
A sermon preached by Geree in May 1648 On the Bloodiness of War, to persuade to peace, met with a response from certain 'left-eared orators' taking it as an aspersion upon the army, and was published in self-defence.
In 1635 Geree, while being approved by these families, was reported to Archbishop Laud's Visitor Sir Nathaniel Brent for refusing to read a declaration making it lawful for sports to be played on Sundays.
[33] However, from late 1640 a ten-year hiatus in the Wonersh register suggests some interruption to Geree's ministry there: but in 1644 he established his orthodoxy as a reformed minister in his tract The Doctrine of the Antinomians Confuted (an answer to Tobias Crisp), and in April 1645 the parsonage and cure of the parish church of Trinity in Guildford was sequestrated to him on the ejectment of Thomas Wall as a scandalous minister.
[40] In an action reflecting the unusual times, at a vestry meeting in 1654 Geree assigned 35 square feet of land within Abinger church to Hussey, for him to build a pew beside the pulpit, on a 1000-year lease for peppercorn rent, by ensealed and witnessed deed.
In the following year two of his sons, John (of Abinger) and Stephen (a Silkman in Soper Lane, London), were under observation as suspected persons when they came from Calais to collect a man lately prisoner in the Upper Bench and returned to France with him.
John Geree, probably his son, was licensed as curate of Shalford in February 1667/8, instituted as Vicar of Farnham in 1669 and as Rector of East Clandon in March 1675/6.