Neale, Thomas (fl. 1657), engraver, worked in the style of Wenceslaus Hollar [q. v.] He engraved, copying Hollar, twenty-four plates of Holbein's ‘Dance of Death.’ The first plate is dated ‘Paris, 1657,’ and the plates are signed ‘T. N.,’ or with his name in full. Nagler supposes him to have engraved the plates for the eighth edition of John Ogilby's ‘Fables of Æsop,’ and states that he engraved some of the plates for Barlow's ‘Diversæ Avium species,’ Paris, 1659 [see, however, under Barlow, Francis].
[Neale's tracts and prospectuses in Brit. Mus. and Guildhall Library; Ruding's Annals of the Coinage; Cal. State Papers, Treasury Ser.; London Gazette; Hawkins's Medallic Illustrations, ii. 104–5, &c.; Macaulay's Hist. of Engl. ch. xx., ‘1694;’ authorities cited above.]
NEALE, WALTER (fl. 1639), New England explorer, was son of William Neale, one of the auditors to Queen Elizabeth, of Warnford, Hampshire, by his first wife, Agnes, daughter of Robert Bowyer of Chichester (Berry. In 1618 he fought under Count Ernest of Mansfeld on behalf of the elector palatine, both in Bohemia and in the Rhine country, and rose to be captain. His difficulties compelled him in February 1625 to petition for a grant of two thousand decayed trees in the New Forest in lieu of a month's pay (460l.) due to his company (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1623–5, p. 487), and in February 1629 he again prayed for relief (ib. 1628–9, p. 480). In 1630 he sailed for Piscataqua, or the lower settlement of New Hampshire, to act as governor of the infant colony at Portsmouth. He promised to discover a reported great lake towards the west, so as to secure to his employers a monopoly of the beaver trade (Winthrop, Hist. of New England, ed. Savage, 1825, i. 38). During a stay of three years he ‘exactly discovered,’ according to his own account, all the rivers and harbours in the habitable part of the country, reformed abuses, subdued the natives, and settled a staple trade of commodities, especially for building ships. On 15 Aug. 1633 Neale embarked for England, and in 1634, at the request of the king, was chosen captain of the company of the Artillery Garden in London (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1633–1634, pp. 230, 443). He applied soon afterwards for the place of muster master of the city (ib. 1611-18, p. 340). After carefully drilling the company for four years, Neale asked to be appointed sergeant-major of Virginia, but George Donne, second son of the dean of St. Paul's, obtained the post (ib. Col. Ser., American and West Indies, 1574–1660, pp. 134–5, 285). He was appointed in 1639 lieutenant-governor of Portsmouth (ib. Dom. 1639, pp. 32, 391).
[Fell's Eccl. Hist. of New England, i. 155, 165, 190–1; Neill's Virginia Carolorum, pp. 87, 132; Neill's Founders of Maryland, p. 184.]
NEALE, Sir WILLIAM (1609–1691), royalist, belonged to the Neales of Wollaston, Northamptonshire, who came originally from Staffordshire, and were the younger branch of the Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Warwickshire family (Noble, Memorials of Cromwell, pp. 11, 15 note, and 32). He was third son of John Neale, grandson of Richard Neale of Staffordshire, whose will was proved in 1610 (Northamptonshire and Rutland Wills, 1510–1652, Index Library). Sir Edmund Neale, knt., who had to compound for his estates as a royalist, and who died in 1671, aged 73, was his eldest brother (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1645, 1647, 1648; Bridges, Hist. of Northamptonshire).
William took an active part in the civil war as scoutmaster-general in Prince Rupert's army. On 3 Feb. 1643 he was knighted by the king at Oxford for bringing the news of the taking of Cirencester by the royalist army; at the relieving of Newark, which was besieged by Sir John Meldrum [q. v.] in March 1644, he fought close to Prince Rupert, who was attacked at once by three ‘sturdy souldiers,’ one of whom, ‘being ready to lay hand on the Prince's Coller, had it almost chopt off by Sir William Neal.’ At the end of the fight he was employed in a parley to draw up the terms upon which Meldrum's forces should retire. He was still in the army in 1659, in which year he seems to have been taken prisoner (Cal. State Papers, 1659, 25 Aug.–4 Sept.)
Presumably as a reward for his services a baronet's warrant was made out for him on 26 Feb. 1646, in which he was specially exempted from the 1,095l. ‘usually payd in respect of that dignity;’ but the grant was never completed. A second warrant of 8 Aug. 1667 (made out to William Neale of Wollaston, omitting the title of knight) seems equally to have failed to procure him the honour which he sought.
He died in Gray's Inn Lane on 24 March 1691, and was buried in St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. His arms were the same as those of the Neales of Deane, Bedfordshire, and of Allesley, Warwickshire: per pale sable and gules, a lion passant guardant or.
