Sir Robert Ainslie, 1st Baronet

Sir Robert Ainslie, 1st Baronet ( – 21 July 1812) was a British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, orientalist, numismatist and Member of Parliament (MP) for the rotten borough of Milborne Port, in Somerset, between 1796 and 1802. He is said to have returned to Scotland in 1727 and to have purchased the estate of Pilton, in the county of Midlothian.

Ambassador to Ottoman Empire Ainslie is first noticed in the London Gazette on 20 September 1775: "The king has been pleased to appoint Robert Ainslie, Esq., to be his majesty's ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, in the room of John Murray, Esq., deceased; and his majesty was pleased this day to confer upon him the honour of knighthood, upon which occasion he had the honour to kiss his majesty's hand". He was given leave to return home on 22 September 1793 and left Turkey sometime in 1794.

Member of Parliament On 8 September 1796, Ainslie received a grant of a pension of £1,000 on the civil list to be held "during the joint lives of his majesty and himself" and was elected a Member of Parliament. It met on the 27th of the same month, with Lord Paget as his colleague, for the close borough of Milborne Port, Somerset. At the general election of 1802, his seat in Parliament was transferred to Hugh Leycester. The Gentleman's Magazine for December 1796 recorded the death of his son on 20 December 1796 from a violent fever. His great-nephew was Thomas Corbett.

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. Mayer also drew other places in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans for Ainslie and in his time visited Wallonia, the Ionian Islands and Egypt, all documented in his paintings. Three volumes of drawings were published, in the words of the dedication, 'under his auspices.' The first of these is entitled Views in Egypt, from the original drawings in possession of Sir Robert Ainslie, taken during his Embassy to Constantinople by Luigi Mayer; engraved by and under the direction of Thomas Milton; with historical Observations and incidental Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of the Natives of that Country, eleph. fol. London, 1801. This was followed by two bilingual volumes, English and French, entitled Views in the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in Caramania, &c., 1803; and Views in Palestine, &c., 1804. The coloured plates in these volumes are ninety-six in number; and fifty-four were afterwards given in the first edition, and seventy-one in the second edition, of Views in Turkey in Europe and Turkey in Asia, London, 1810. A selection from all these appeared in 1833 as a group of engravings, uncoloured and of smaller size, with the title of A Series of Twenty-four Views illustrative of the Holy Scriptures.