and manhood as a factor in Spain, with which country
his family was long connected commercially, and whence, by means of a
trade in wines and oil, great part of his own vast fortune was to come.
On his return he seems to have settled in London, and to have bent
himself resolutely to the task of making money. In 1681, the date of his
father's decease, he appears as a governor of Christ's hospital, to
which noble foundation he afterwards gave frequently and largely. In the
same year he probably began to take an active interest in the affairs of
Bristol, where he is found about this time embarked in a sugar refinery;
and during the remainder of his life he seems to have divided his
attention pretty equally between the city of his birth and that of his
adoption. In 1682 he appears in the records of the great western port as
advancing a sum of L1800 to its needy corporation; in 1683 as "a free
burgess and _meire_ (St Kitts) merchant" he was made a member of the
Merchant's Hall; and in 1684 he was appointed one of a committee for
managing the affairs of Clifton. In 1685 he again appears as the city's
creditor for about L2000, repayment of which he is found insisting on in
1686. In 1689 he was chosen auditor by the vestry at Mortlake, where he
was residing in an old house once the abode of Ireton and Cromwell. In
1691, on St Michael's Hill, Bristol, at a cost of L8000, he founded an
almshouse for the reception of 24 poor men and women, and endowed with
accommodation for "Six Saylors," at a cost of L600, the merchant's
almshouses in King Street. In 1696, at a cost of L8000, he endowed a
foundation for clothing and teaching 40 boys (the books employed were to
have in them "no tincture of Whiggism"); and six years afterwards he
expended a further sum of L1500 in rebuilding the school-house. In 1708;
at a cost of L41,200, he built and endowed his great foundation on Saint
Augustine's Back, for the instruction, clothing, maintaining and
apprenticing of 100 boys; and in time of scarcity, during this and next
year, he transmitted "by a private hand" some L20,000 to the London
committee. In 1710, after a poll of four days, he was sent to
parliament, to represent, on strictest Tory principles, his native city
of Bristol; and in 1713, after three years of silent political life, he
resigned this charge. He died at Mortlake in 1721, having nearly
completed his eighty-fifth year; and was buried in All Saints' church,
Bristol.

Colston, who