The arguments of Symonds in favour of the colony in 1609, equating the British nation with the biblical Abraham, and stating that Native Americans lacked property rights, have been seen as presaging later developments in the colonisation of North America.
[1] Born in Hampshire, Symonds matriculated at Oxford on 3 March 1573, and was elected a demy of Magdalen College in 1573, then described as from Oxfordshire.
[2] In 1583 Symonds was appointed by the President Laurence Humfrey to the mastership of Magdalen College School, where he was in post to 1586.
[6]: 105 Related sermons of the time were those by John Donne, which put forward similar religious arguments, and William Crashaw.
[7] Symonds invoked the British Constantine as a model for James VI and I, a pacifier and propagator of the Christian gospel.
[3] From some Observations by Symonds, printed in Captain John Smith's General History of Virginia, 1624, it was thought at one time that he had been resident in the Virginia colony; but that is now not thought to be supported by the evidence.