Francis Douce, who was born in 1757, was a son of Thomas Douce, one of the Six Clerks of the Court of Chancery. He was first sent to a school at Richmond, conducted by a Mr. Lawton, author of a work on Egypt, and afterwards to 'a French academy, kept by a pompous and ignorant Life-Guardsman, with a view to his learning merchants' accounts, which were his aversion.' On leaving school he studied for the bar, and for some time held an appointment, under his father, in the Six Clerks' Office, but the post was not very congenial to him, as from an early age he devoted himself to books and antiquities, and he also had a great passion for music. His father, who died in 1799, bequeathed the greater part of his property, which was very considerable, to his elder son, leaving but a comparatively small amount to be divided between Francis and his sisters, but in 1823 Nollekens, the sculptor, left Douce so large a portion of his fortune that at the decease of the latter his property was valued at nearly eighty thousand pounds. In 1807 he succeeded the Rev. Robert Nares as Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, but resigned the post in 1812 in consequence of some trifling disagreement with one of the trustees. While holding this office he took part in the preparation of the catalogues of the Harleian and Lansdowne manuscripts. Douce published in 1807 Illustrations of Shakspeare and Ancient Manners, and in 1833 The Dance of Death, 'exhibited in elegant Engravings on wood, with a Dissertation on the several Representations on that Subject.' The substance of this Dissertation had appeared about forty years before in illustration of Hollar's etchings, published by Edwards of Pall Mall, London. In addition to these works he edited Arnold's Chronicle in 1811, two books for the Roxburghe Club in 1822 and 1824, and assisted in the production of Scott's Sir Tristram, Smith's Vagabondiniana, and the 1824 edition of Warton's History of English Poetry. Many papers also by him are to be found in the ArchÆologia, the Vetusta Monumenta, and the Gentleman's Magazine. Douce was a prominent Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and numbered among his friends Isaac D'Israeli, the Rev. C.M. Cracherode, Sir George Staunton, Mr. John Towneley, and Dr. Dibdin, to the last of whom he left five hundred pounds. He is introduced under the name of Prospero in Dibdin's Bibliomania. Douce died at his residence in Gower Street, London, on the 30th of March 1834, and he left in his will two hundred pounds to Sir Anthony Carlisle 'requesting him either to sever my head or extract the heart from my body, so as to prevent the possibility of the return of vitality.' His valuable collection of printed books, which consisted of sixteen thousand four hundred and eighty volumes, with a quantity of fragments of early English works, including two printed by Caxton, which are unique; three hundred and ninety-three manuscripts, many of them beautifully illuminated; ninety-eight charters; a large number of valuable drawings and prints; together with a collection of coins and medals, were left by him to the Bodleian Library. It is said that this bequest was the result of the courteous reception he received from Dr. Bandinel, the librarian, when Douce visited Oxford with Isaac D'Israeli in 1830. The carvings in ivory or other materials, and the miscellaneous curiosities, were bequeathed to Dr., afterwards Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, of Goodrich Castle, Wales, who published an account of them, entitled The Doucean Museum. To the British Museum Douce left a volume of the works of Albert DÜrer which had formerly belonged to Nollekens, his impressions from monumental brasses, and his 'commented copies of the blockhead Whitaker's History of Manchester, and his Cornwall Cathedral.' His will also directs his executor 'to collect together all my letters and correspondence, all my private manuscripts, and unfinished or even finished essays or intended work or works, memorandum books, especially such as are marked in the inside of their covers with a red cross, with the exception only of such articles as he may think proper to destroy, as my diaries, or other articles of a merely private nature, and to put them into a strong box, to be sealed up without lock or key, and with a brass plate inscribed "Mr. Douce's papers, to be opened on the 1st of January 1900," and then to deposit this box in the British Museum, or, if the Trustees should decline receiving it, I then wish it to remain with the other things bequeathed to the Bodleian Library.' The Trustees accepted the charge of the box, and it was opened at the time appointed, but nothing of literary value was found in it.

A catalogue of the printed books, manuscripts, charters and fragments presented by Douce to the Bodleian was published in 1840, and there is also a manuscript catalogue of the prints and drawings.