He also formed a collection of books and prints relating to Chester, and added a great number of engravings to his copy of George Ormerod's History of Cheshire.
[1] In 1826 Hawkins was appointed Keeper of Antiquities (which at that time included coins and medals, and prints and drawings) at the British Museum, in succession to Taylor Combe, for whom he had been acting as deputy since May 1825; and held the office till his resignation at the end of 1860.
Hawkins published in 1841 (London) The Silver Coins of England, the standard work on the subject (2nd and 3rd editions by Robert Lloyd Kenyon, 1876, and 1887).
He also wrote a descriptive account of British medals, and an abridgment of part of this work (to the end of the reign of William III) was printed in 1852.
The trustees of the British Museum declined to issue it, chiefly on account of several paragraphs in which Hawkins expressed his strong Protestant and Tory views, but when completed to the death of George II, and revised, with additions, by A. W. Franks and H. A. Grueber, it ultimately appeared as a British Museum publication in 1885, with the title Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland, London, 2 vols.
[1] Hawkins edited for the Chetham Society Sir William Brereton's Travels in Holland, 1844, and The Holy Lyfe ... of Saynt Werburge, 1848.