Thomas Neal or Neale (1519–1590?) was an English churchman and academic, who became Regius Professor of Hebrew.
Life.
Born about 1519 at Yeate in Gloucestershire, Neale became in 1531 a scholar of Winchester College with the support of his maternal uncle, Alexander Belsire, a Fellow of New College, Oxford. On 19 June 1538 he was chosen probationer of New College, and in 1540 admitted perpetual fellow. He graduated B.A. 16 May 1542, M.A. 11 July 1546, and was admitted B.D. 23 July 1556.
Before he took orders, Neal had acquired a reputation as a Greek and Hebrew scholar and theologian, and was given a pension by Sir Thomas Whyte. He travelled in France, probably during the time of the Edwardian reformation; and appears to have been there in 1556. Soon after the beginning of Mary I's reign he had been made chaplain to Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, and appointed rector of Thenford in Northamptonshire.
On the accession of Elizabeth I, Neal went to Oxford, and in 1559 was made Regius Professor of Hebrew. He entered himself as a commoner of Hart Hall, and built lodgings for himself at the west end of New College, and opposite to Hart Hall. He took a prominent part in the entertainment of Elizabeth at Oxford in 1566, and wrote an account of it, published in Anthony Wood's "History and Antiquities of Oxford", and used as the source for Richard Stephens's "Brief Rehearsal".
In 1569, concerned because of his Catholicism, Neal resigned his professorship and retired to Cassington near Oxford.
The "Nag's Head Story".
Neal has been taken as the ultimate authority for the Nag's Head Story, told against Matthew Parker by Catholic opponents of the Church of England, as related by William Arthur Shaw in the "Dictionary of National Biography". The statements that Bonner sent him to Bishop Anthony Kitchin to dissuade him from assisting in the consecration of Parker, and that he was present at the pretended ceremony at the Nag's Head, rest on assertions of John Pits.
Works.
Neal's works were:
Thomas Tanner also assigned to Neal:
Notes.
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 incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 