At the general election of 1802, his seat in parliament was transferred to Hugh Leycester. He was created a baronet, of Great Torrington in the County of Lincoln, on 13 October 1804, with remainder, in default of issue male, to his nephew, Robert Sharpe Ainslie, son of General George Ainslie. The Gentleman's Magazine for December 1796 records the death of his son on 20 December 1796 from a violent fever. His great-nephew was Thomas Corbett (Lincolnshire MP). Ainslie died after a long illness aged 83 at Bath, England, on 21 July 1812. Numismatics Ainslie took advantage of his position at Constantinople to amass a collection of ancient coins from Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and the north of Africa. The most characteristic were described by abbot Domenico Sestini, who dedicated to Ainslie a work which has gone through several editions, entitled Lettere e Dissertazioni Numismatiche sopra alcune Medaglie rare della Collezione Ainslieana, 4 vols. 4to, Leghorn, 1789–90, a fifth volume of which, with the enlarged title e di altri Musei, appeared at Rome in 1794, and four others, referring to particular collections, were published at Berlin in 1804–06. Sestini continued his exposition of the Ainslie collection in a smaller work, and more special in its scope, entitled Dissertazione sopra alcune Monete Armene del Principi Rupinensi della Collezione Ainslieana, 4to, Leghorn, 1790. This work is at present bound up with a copy of the first four volumes of the Lettere e Dissertazioni, which, according to an inscription, probably autographic, on the fly-leaf, was "presented from Sr Robt Ainslie, 5 June 1795", to the British Museum. Another of Sestini's volumes is entitled Descriptio Numorum Veterum ex Museis Ainslie, Bellini, Bondacca, Borgia, Leipzig, 1796. Ainslie had been the 'Mæcenas' of Sestini's dedication of the Lettere e Dissertazioni of 1789; seven years later, in the preface to the Descriptio, he was a malignant speculator and trader in antiquities. Research and commissions Ainslie's researches embraced antiquities of various kinds, objects of natural history, and illustrations of the East and its current life. Ainslie was a friend of important German orientalist artist Luigi Mayer and before departing Turkey travelled with him along the coast. He commissioned Mayer to produce drawings of many landmarks en route include the former settlements of ancient Lycia, such as The Harbor at Cacamo and ancient Telmessus (Fethiye). Mayer also drew other places in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans for Ainslie and