NEAL, DANIEL, the author of an able History of the Puritans, was born in London in December 1678. After receiving his elementary education first at Merchant Tailors' School, and subsequently at a dissenting academy, he spent three years on the Continent, studying successively at Utrecht and Leyden. On his return in 1703 he commenced to preach. His learning and abilities recommended him in the following year to the office of assistant to Dr Singleton, the minister of an Independent congregation in Aldersgate Street. The Doctor died in 1706, and Neal was chosen his successor. He now appeared as a most faithful pastor, and at the same time as an assiduous cultivator of polite letters, especially of history. The History of New England, published in 1720, introduced him to the literary public. Meanwhile several of his sermons, preached for charitable purposes or on special occasions, were printed by request, and gained for him considerable fame as a pulpit orator. About 1729 he had risen so high in the estimation of his co-religionists, that he was requested to undertake an historical account of the Nonconformists. Accordingly, the first volume of The History of the Puritans, commencing at the Reformation in England, was published in 1732; the second followed in 1733, and the third in 1736. The fourth, bringing the narrative down to the Act of Toleration of 1689, was published in 1738. This history, though written in a calm and judicious spirit, was accused of being one-sided, and was attacked by Bishop Maddox and Dr Zachary Grey. Neal answered the former, and would in all probability have answered the latter also, had not his declining health prevented him. He died in April 1743. Neal's History of the Puritans, accompanied with a Life of the author, was edited by Toulmin in 6 vols., 1793. The same edition was reprinted in 3 vols. Svo, London, 1837.