Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Colston, Edward (1636–1721) Kenneth Morgan

• Published in print: 23 September 2004 • Published online: 23 September 2004 • This version: 9th July 2020

Colston, Edward (1636–1721), merchant, slave trader, and philanthropist, was born on 2 November 1636 in Temple Street, Bristol, the eldest of probably eleven children (six boys and five girls are known) of William Colston (1608–1681), a merchant, and his wife, Sarah, née Batten (d. 1701). His father had served an apprenticeship with Richard Aldworth, one of the wealthiest Bristol merchants of the early Stuart period, and had prospered as a merchant. A royalist and an alderman, William Colston was removed from his office by order of parliament in 1645 after Prince Rupert surrendered the city to the roundhead forces. Until that point Edward Colston had been brought up in Bristol and probably at Winterbourne, south Gloucestershire, where his father had an estate.

The Colston family moved to London during the English civil war. Little is known about Edward Colston's education, though it is possible that he was a private pupil at Christ's Hospital. In 1654 he was apprenticed to the London Mercers' Company for eight years. By 1672 he was shipping goods from London, and the following year he was enrolled in the Mercers' Company. He soon built up a lucrative mercantile business, trading with Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Africa. From the 1670s several of Colston’s immediate family members became involved in the Royal African Company, and Edward became a member himself on 26 March 1680. The Royal African Company was a chartered joint-stock Company based in London. In the late decades of the seventeenth century it became the central organisation through which English vessels transported enslaved people from West Africa to the Americas; a trade on which it had a monopoly in the years 1672 to 1698. Colston served on the Company’s Court of Assistants in the years 1681 to 1683, 1686 to 1688, and 1691, and was deputy governor in 1689-1690. This record of office holding suggests a heavy involvement in the slave trade. His European commodities trading, financial investments, and lending activities also likely contributed to his great wealth.

During the 1680s Colston began to take an active interest in his native city, where his parents had resettled. In 1682 he made a loan to the Bristol corporation. In 1683 he visited his fatally ill brother Thomas in the city; on this occasion he became a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers and a burgess. After Thomas's death in 1684 he inherited a mercantile business in Small Street and also became a partner in a sugar refinery at St Peter's Churchyard. He seems to have lived in Bristol for a while, but by 1689 he had taken up residence at Mortlake, Surrey, which was his base for the rest of his life. He continued to engage in overseas trade, mainly in London ventures, and made substantial business profits.

Though there is no record of a further visit by him to Bristol until 1700, Colston in middle age became one of the most famous philanthropic benefactors to his native city. In the 1690s he founded and endowed almshouses in King Street and on St Michael's Hill. He also endowed Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, a school for boys, and was instrumental in helping the Merchant Venturers to found Colston's Boys' School, which opened in 1710. Two years later he donated money for a school in Temple parish to educate and clothe forty poor boys. He gave money to other charity schools in Bristol and provided funds for the embellishment of several of the city's churches, including Temple, St Mary Redcliffe, St Werburgh, All Saints, and Bristol Cathedral. His munificence also extended to other parts of the country, and he gave benefactions to churches, hospitals, workhouses, and almshouses in London, Surrey, Devon, and Lancashire. But these did not match the extent of his charitable gifts to Bristol.

Colston was a strong tory and high-churchman who attended daily service at the cathedral when he was staying in Bristol. An opponent of Catholicism, dissent, and whiggism, he insisted that the boys at Colston's School should be Anglicans and that they be prepared for apprenticeships. He laid down strict conditions for his public charities, and founded a series of Lenten lectures in 1710 for which he chose the subjects. He was elected a member of the SPCK in 1709. In October 1710 he was returned as an MP for Bristol, but he took little active part in parliament and did not seek re-election after the dissolution that occurred with Queen Anne's death.

An obstinate man who set restrictions to his charitable donations, Colston remained a bachelor. He retired from business in 1708 and died on 11 October 1721 at his home in Mortlake. His public charities amounted to nearly £71,000 and he bequeathed £100,000 to his relatives. He left detailed instructions for his funeral: his body was carried in a hearse from London to Bristol, and then accompanied by people who had benefited from his Bristol charities to his burial on 27 October amid much pomp and ceremony at All Saints' Church. The effigy on his tomb was executed by Rysbrack from Richardson's portrait of him in the Council House, Bristol. Colston has been remembered in Bristol since his death. His memory was celebrated for many years by the Colston or ‘Parent’ Society, founded in 1726; by the Dolphin Society, set up by the tories in 1749; by the Grateful Society, founded in 1758, which had no political affiliation; and by the Anchor Society, founded by the whigs in 1769. Celebrating Colston's memory was part of the civic ritual of Georgian Bristol, the anniversary of his birth becoming virtually a public holiday after the 1720s. It still serves as a time for raising large donations, which are used for charitable purposes. Many of his foundations continued to flourish, notably the Bristol schools he established. However, in the late twentieth century the celebration of this philanthropic legacy began to be questioned on the basis of Colston’s involvement in the slave trade. A bronze statue of him, erected in Colston Avenue in 1895, was defaced with the words ‘Slave trader’ in 1998, and was later pulled down and thrown into the sea in the course of a mass anti-racism protest on 7 June 2020. Subsequently, the city’s chief concert venue, the Colston Hall, has also been renamed.

Sources

• H. J. Wilkins, Edward Colston (1636–1721 ad): a chronological account of his life and work together with an account of the Colston societies and memorials in Bristol (1920) • T. Garrard, Edward Colston, the philanthropist, ed. S. G. Tovey (1852) • J. Latimer, The annals of Bristol in the seventeenth century (1900) • J. Latimer, The annals of Bristol in the eighteenth century (1893) • B. D. G. Little, The city and county of Bristol: a study of Atlantic civilisation (1954) • P. McGrath, The merchant venturers of Bristol: a history of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the city of Bristol from its origin to the present day (1975) • J. F. Nichols and J. Taylor, Bristol past and present, 4 vols. (1881), vol. 3 • J. Evans, A chronological outline of the history of Bristol (1824) • DNB • will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/582, sig. 236; PROB 11/586, sig. 168 • K. Morgan, Edward Colston and Bristol (1999)