After his graduation, Gale briefly served as a diplomat in France, as well as holding a position as a reader at Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

Although contemporaries felt he was one of the foremost scholars of his age, later historians have been less convinced, contrasting his learning unfavourably with his father's.

His father was Dean of York as well as a professor of Greek at Cambridge University, while his mother was a cousin of the diarist Samuel Pepys.

Thomas and Barbara had a younger son, Samuel Gale, who also became an antiquary, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who became William Stukeley's second wife.

In 1709 he supported the naturalization of the Palatines and in March 1710 he reported on and carried up a bill for regulating servants’ wages.

[5] Gale inherited his father's library of manuscripts and books, which he eventually donated to his alma mater, Trinity College,[3] in 1738.

[3] In 1697 Gale translated Louis Jobert's La science des medailles into English, with the title of The Knowledge of Medals.

His last major published work was as the editor of a 12th-century manuscript register of the Honour of Richmond that was contained in the Cotton library.

[2] He also contributed a number of essays on antiquarian topics to the Philosophical Transactions journal put out by the Royal Society.

[5] Gale's letters survive, and some were first published in the third volume of John Nichols's Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica in 1790.