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John Walley was also of good stock, his father being rector of one of the London churches. In 1690 he commanded the land forces of William Phipps in the expedition against Canada. He also, in his old age, was forced by disease to seek a more luxurious abode in Boston. Stephen Burton was said to have been a graduate of Oxford. He was undoubtedly the most scholarly man of the four proprietors. Oliver, a rich Bostonian, never resided in Bristol but sold his share to Nathan Hayman, another wealthy Boston merchant.

With men like these as sponsors for the new settlement, it was not difficult to secure settlers. The most noted among them was Benjamin Church, the Indian fighter already mentioned. Capt. Church built a house upon Constitution Street. (Church Street was not named in his honor. Upon that street stood the edifice which gave it its name, the building in which the members of the Church of England worshipped. There were many streets named for a like reason in colonial days.) He was the first representative of the town in the general court of Plymouth Colony and was many times elected to public office. In his later years he made his home in Little Compton, whence many of his descendants drifted back to Bristol. Because the town was to be the seaport of Plymouth Colony, many of the descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims naturally came to dwell within its borders. In choosing Bristol for its name, the settlers cherished a hope that, as in the case of its English namesake, it would become the great city upon the west. Boston on the east shore was the London of Massachusetts.