tian Knowledge, and the next year he instituted a course of Lent lectures in various parish churches in Bristol on 'the primitive discipline and usages of the church of England.' He gave 6,000l. to the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty for the augmentation of small livings. Much that has been said of his narrow-mindedness was the natural consequence of the times in which he lived. His dislike and distrust of whigs and dissenters were shared by all his party, and both sides in politics and religion were equally violent in their words and actions. He was peremptory in his dealings and strict in exacting the deference and obedience he thought due to him from those whom he entrusted to carry out his benevolent schemes. As a strong party man he had many enemies, who misrepresented and hindered his plans and spread untrue reports as to his private life. At the general election in October 1710, Colston, after a four days' poll, was returned as the senior member for Bristol. He did not take an active part in parliament, and seems to have confined himself to presenting petitions on matters which concerned the commercial interests of his constituency. He did not seek re-election after the dissolution of 1713. On his retirement a gross of bottles of sherry of the value of 16l. 18s. 6d. was presented to him by the corporation in acknowledgment of his services. Colston never married, and his house at Mortlake was kept first by his sister and after her death by a niece. He died at Mortlake on 11 Oct. 1721, in his eighty-fifth year. Although he left minute directions for his funeral, which was to be simply conducted, he was buried with much state in All Saints' Church, Bristol. His public charities are known to have amounted to 70,695l., besides the large sums he gave away each year in an unostentatious manner. Nevertheless he died very wealthy. Four portraits of him exist; one belongs to the school he founded on St. Augustine's Back; another, painted by Richardson and engraved by Virtue, was executed by order of the corporation in 1702, at the cost of 17l. 11s., and is still in the council house; a third is in the Merchants' Hall; and the fourth, painted by Kneller in 1693, is in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. The effigy on his tomb was executed by Rysbrach from Richardson's portrait. Flowers are still placed on this tomb every Sunday. His memory is also celebrated on 13 Nov. of each year by the Colston or 'Parent' Society, founded in 1726; by the Dolphin Society, established by the tories in 1749; by the Grateful Society, founded in 1758, which belongs to no political party; and by the Anchor Society, founded by the whigs in 1769. At each anniversary large sums are raised by subscription, which are expended on charitable purposes.
[Garrard's Edward Colston, ed. Tovey; Seyer's Memoirs of Bristol, ii. 359; Nicholls's and Taylor's Bristol Past and Present, iii. 121-38; Manchee's Bristol Charities, i. 174, 247, 253, ii. 52.]
COLT or COULT, MAXIMILIAN (fl. 1600–1618), sculptor, was born at Arras in Flanders, and settled in England at the close of Elizabeth's reign. On 4 March 1604-5 he signed an agreement with the lord treasurer, Sir Robert Cecil, to carve a monument above Queen Elizabeth's grave in Westminster Abbey for 600l. The work was completed at the end of 1606. On 17 March 1607-8 Colt was employed on a second monument in Westminster Abbey above the grave of the Princess Sophia, the infant child of James I, who was born and died in the preceding June, and in September 1608 it was agreed that this monument should also commemorate the princess's sister Anne, who had died in the previous December. Colt received for this work 215l. On 28 July 1608 Colt was nominated the king's master-carver, and on 3 March 1608-9 he was granted a suit of broadcloth and fur to be renewed annually for life. In 1611 he carved 'a crown on the head of the Duke of York's barge,' and in the following years he was employed in decorating the king's and queen's private barges. The last payment for this work was made on 14 Oct. 1624. Between 1610 and 1612 he is credited with having designed and superintended the building of Wadham College, Oxford, but this statement is probably due to a confusion of Colt with (Sir Thomas) Holt, who has better claims to be regarded as the architect. Colt is met with as late as 1641, when he was imprisoned in the Fleet, and released by the warden. A petition was presented to the House of Lords in this year praying for an inquiry into the warden's lenient conduct (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 111). A letter (7 Jan. 1610-11) from Colt to Suffolk and Salisbury is among the manuscripts at Longleat.
Colt's name appears to have been originally 'Poultrain,' and in early life he is often described as 'Powtran or Poutraine, alias Colt,' but he was afterwards known only as Colt or Coult. He had a house in Bartholomew Close, and is described as living in Farringdon Ward in 1618, when his name appears in a list of foreigners then resident in London, together with that of John Colt, probably his son, who was also a sculptor and a native
