COLSTON, Edward (1639-1721), was the spn of William Colston, a Bristol merchant of good position. He is generally understood to have spent some years of his youth 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 be 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 £1800 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 £2000, 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 lieton and Cromwell. In 1691, on St Michael’s Hill, Bristol, at a cost of £8000, he founded an almshouse for the reception of 24 poor men and women, and endowed with accommodation for “Six Saylors,” at a cost of £600, the Merchant’s Almshouses in King Street. In 1696, at a cost of £8000, he endowed a ...