See Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_ (1895); G. Waitz,
_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_, Band i. (1880); and W. Stubbs,
_Constitutional History_, vol. i. (1897).
FRANKS, SIR AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON (1826-1897), English antiquary, was born
on the 20th of March 1826, and was educated at Eton and at Trinity
College, Cambridge. He early showed inclination for antiquarian
pursuits, and in 1851 was appointed assistant in the Antiquities
Department of the British Museum. Here, and as director of the Society
of Antiquaries, an appointment he received in 1858, he made himself the
first authority in England upon medieval antiquities of all
descriptions, upon porcelain, glass, the manufactures of savage nations,
and in general upon all Oriental curiosities and works of art later than
the Classical period. In 1866 the British and medieval antiquities, with
the ethnographical collections, were formed into a distinct department
under his superintendence; and the Christy collection of ethnography in
Victoria Street, London, prior to its amalgamation with the British
Museum collections, was also under his care. He became vice-president
and ultimately president of the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1878
declined the principal librarianship of the museum. He retired on his
seventieth birthday, 1896, and died on the 21st of May 1897. His ample
fortune was largely devoted to the collection of ceramics and precious
objects of medieval art, most of which became the property of the
nation, either by donation in his lifetime or by bequest at his death.
Although chiefly a medieval antiquary, Franks was also an authority on
classical art, especially Roman remains in Britain: he was also greatly
interested in book-marks and playing-cards, of both of which he formed
important collections. He edited Kemble's _Horae Ferales_, and wrote
numerous memoirs on archaeological subjects. Perhaps his most important
work of this class is the catalogue of his own collection of porcelain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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