Charles Franklyn

Charles Aubrey Hamilton Franklyn (25 August 1896 – 26 November 1982(1982-11-26) (aged 86)) was a British medical doctor, and scholar of genealogy, heraldry, and academic dress. He was the son of Captain (later Major) Aubrey Hamilton Franklin and his wife Ethel Mary Franklin (née Gray), altering the spelling of his surname in 1932, as a result of his research into his own family history.

He traced his interest in academic dress to September 1910, when he became a pupil at Tonbridge School, and it retained considerable fascination for him for the rest of his life. Between 1949 and 1956 he designed complete systems of academic dress for the universities of Malaya (which bestowed upon him an honorary MA in 1951), Southampton, Hull, the Australian National University, and the Chichester Theological College. At various times he contributed to the academic dress schemes of several other universities (in particular, the universities of Cambridge and Nottingham, and the New University of Ulster). He also served as Bedell of Convocation at the University of London. In his works, he often boasts his own academical dress designs as the most 'beautiful and dignified in the world'.

His 1970 monograph on academic dress, the result of many years' research, is somewhat difficult to find (primarily due to its limited print run, and the author's insistence that any unwanted copies be returned to him rather than sold on) but contains a large amount of valuable information and remains a standard text on the subject.

He was married, in 1929, to Erica Milly Bolton; the marriage was annulled in 1933.