Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)Howitt, William
History
Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Howitt, William
Literary landmarks -- Great Britain; Poets, English -- Homes and haunts
Edward Colston was not merely the founder of this school for the
clothing, maintaining, and apprenticing of one hundred boys, at a charge
of about £40,000, but he also founded another school in Temple-street,
to clothe and maintain forty boys, at a cost of £3000; and he left £8500
for an alms-house for twelve men and twelve women, with 6_s._ per week
to the chief brother, and 3_s._ per week to the rest, with coals, &c.;
£600 for the maintaining of six sailors in the Merchants' Alms-house;
£1500 to clothe, maintain, instruct, and apprentice six boys; £200 to
the Mint Work-house; £500 to rebuild the Boys' Hospital; £200 to put out
poor children; £1200 to be given, in £100 a year, for twelve years, to
apprentice the boys with, £10 each for his school; £1230 to beautify
different churches in the city; £2500 to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in
London; and £2000 to Christ Church School in London; £500 to St.
Thomas's Hospital; £500 to Bethlehem Hospital; £200 to New Work-house in
Bishopsgate Without; £300 to the Society for Propagating the Gospel;
£900 for educating and clothing twelve poor boys and twelve girls, at
£45 yearly, at Mortlake in Surrey; to build and endow an alms-house at
Sheen in Surrey, sum not stated; £6000 to augment poor livings; besides
various other sums for charitable purposes. All this property did this
noble man thus bestow on the needs of his poorer brethren, without
forgetting, as is often the case on great occasions, those of his own
blood relatives, to whom he bequeathed the princely sum of £100,000.
But, like an able and wise merchant, he did not merely bequeath these
munificent funds, but "he performed all these charitable works in his
lifetime; invested revenues for their support in trustees' hands; lived
to see the trusts justly executed, as they are at this day; and saw with
his own eyes the good effects of all his establishments." Great, too, as
were these bequests, they were not the result of hoarding during a long,
penurious life, as is often the case, to leave a boastful name at his
death; his whole life was like the latter end of it. True, he did not
marry, and when urged to it, used to reply, with a sort of pleasantness,
"Every helpless widow is my wife, and her distressed orphans my
children." "He was a most successful merchant," says Barrett, in his
History of Bristol, "and never insured a ship, and never lost one." He
lived first in Small-street, Bristol, but having so much business in
London, and being chosen to represent the city, he removed thither, and
afterward lived, as he advanced in years, a very retired life, at
Mortlake, in Surrey. His daily existence was one of the noblest acts of
Christian benevolence; and his private donations were not less than his
public. He sent at one time £3000 to relieve and free debtors in
Ludgate, by a private hand; freed yearly those confined for small debts
in Whitechapel Prison and the Marshalsea; sent £1000 to relieve distress
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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