ASHMOLE, ELIAS (1617-1692), English antiquarian, and founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, was born at Lich field, the son of a saddler. In 1638 he became a solicitor, in 1644 was appointed commissioner of excise, and subsequently obtained a commission as captain of horse. In 1649 he married as his second wife Lady Mainwaring. This marriage enabled him to devote his whole time to his favourite studies. His inter est in astrology, aroused by Sir George Wharton and by William Lilly, seems, in the following years, to have subsided in favour of heraldry and antiquarian research. Ashmole was in high favour at the court of Charles II. He was made successively Windsor herald, commissioner, comptroller and accountant-gen eral of excise, commissioner for Surinam and comptroller of the White Office. He afterwards refused the office of Garter king-of arms in favour of Sir William Dugdale, whose daughter he had married after the death of his second wife in 1668. In 1672 he published his exhaustive Institutions, Laws and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, the fruit of years of patient antiquarian research. Five years later he presented to the University of Oxford the Ashmolean museum, the first public museum of curi osities in the kingdom, the larger part of which he inherited from a friend, John Tradescant. He stipulated that a suitable building should be erected for its reception, and the collection was not finally installed until 1683. Subsequently he made the further gift to the university of his library.