p. 249) as ‘a suspended priest, driven out of North Wales,’ who then kept school at Brampton Bryan, under the protection of Sir Robert Harley, with whom he and the rector of the parish were charged with ‘all the customary irregularities’ in public worship. During the next few years he preached occasionally to the independents at Bristol (Broadmead Records, p. 9). When the civil war broke out he fled to London and preached in several of the chief city churches. He is said to have been stationed for a time at Sandwich in Kent, and in August 1642 was apparently at Andover, where the ejected vicar would not permit him to enter the church (Commons' Journals, ii. 735).
When the House of Commons in 1645 turned its attention to the spiritual condition of Wales, it was ordered that Symonds, Walter Cradock, and Henry Walter should each be paid 100l. a year out of the diocesan and capitular revenues of Llandaff and St. Davids ‘towards their maintenance in the work of the ministry in South Wales.’ The ordinance passed the upper house on 17 Nov. 1646, but the salaries were made payable from Michaelmas 1645 (ib. iv. 242, 622, 707; Lords' Journals, pp. 568–9, where the ordinance is printed). Thereupon Symonds proceeded to South Wales, to which country his labours were subsequently confined. He was appointed one of the approvers of preachers under the act for the propagation of the Gospel in Wales, passed 22 Feb. 1649–50. He is mentioned as preaching at St. Fagan's, near Cardiff, about 1655, and in September 1657 the trustees for maintenance of ministers settled on him an augmentation of 50l. towards a lecture to be preached in Llandaff Cathedral (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1657–8, p. 100).
He is probably to be identified with the minister who preached before the House of Commons on 30 Sept. 1646 and 26 April 1648 (Commons' Journals, iv. 678, v. 545). His theological views were those of a high Calvinist, though an opponent charged him with preaching ‘high strains of antinomianism.’ He probably died shortly before the Restoration.
[Authorities cited; Edwards's Gangræna, 2nd edit. pt. iii. 108–9, 241–2; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, ii. 301; Rees's Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 2nd edit. pp. 48, 54–6, 67, 69–70, 513; Historical Traditions and Facts relating to the County of Monmouth, pt. vi.]
SYMONDS, RICHARD (1617–1692?), royalist and antiquary, was the eldest son of Edward (or Edmund) Symonds of the Plumtrees (now known as The Buck), Black Notley, Essex, where he was born in 1617. His mother, who brought the Notley property into the family, was Anne, daughter of Joshua Draper of Braintree. His grandfather, Richard Symonds (d. 1627), belonged to a respectable family at Newport, Shropshire, but had himself settled at the Poole, Yeldham, Essex. Like his father and grandfather, as well as several of his uncles and cousins, Symonds became a cursitor of the chancery court. He was committed a prisoner by Miles Corbet as a delinquent on 25 March 1642-3, but escaping thence on 21 Oct. he joined the royalist army, becoming a member of the troop of horse which formed the king's lifeguard, under the command of Lord Bernard Stuart, afterwards Earl of Lichfield [q. v.] He was thus with the king in most of his movements during the ensuing two years, being present at the engagements of Cropredy Bridge, Newbury, Naseby, and at the relief of Chester, where the Earl of Lichfield was killed. He was subsequently with Sir William Vaughan (d. 1649) [q. v.] at Denbigh and elsewhere. After the king's surrender, in the autumn of 1646, he applied on 17 Dec. to be allowed to compound for his delinquency (Cal. of Proc. of Comm. for Compounding, p. 1610). On 1 Jan. 1648 he left London and travelled, first to Paris, and then to Rome and Venice, where he resided till about the end of 1652, when he returned again to England. In 1655 he was implicated in the abortive plot for restoring the monarchy, and was one of a batch of over seventy persons who were on that account arrested in the eastern counties, but were subsequently released on bond in October (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1655, pp. 367-9).
From an early age Symonds evinced strong archaeological tastes, and in all his wanderings he seems never to have lost an opportunity for jotting down in his notebook such topographical or genealogical memoranda as he came across. He thus kept a diary of the marchings of the royal army from 10 April 1644 to 11 Feb. 1646, and the four notebooks which he so filled are still preserved at the British Museum (being Addit. MS. 17062 and Harleian MSS. 911, 939, and 944). These were frequently quoted by county historians, and in 1859 were edited for the Camden Society by Charles Edward Long, under the title 'Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army during the Great Civil War,' London, 4to. His account of the great struggle, though meagre, is entitled to the credit of strict accuracy, and his description of the second battle of Newbury is both minute and interesting. Another notebook
