Return to Britain & Life in London

In January 1803 Lachlan Macquarie commenced his return voyage from India to Britain after an absence of sixteen years. He travelled on board the East Indiaman Sir Edward Hughes under the command of Captain James Urmston. Ports of call included Cape Town and St. Helena and the journey was completed in four months. He landed at Brighthelmstone in Sussex on 7 May.

On 16 May war with France resumed and for the next two months, while the War Office decided what to do with him, Macquarie visited various friends and relations in London and the counties of southern England. He declined military postings to Portugal and the island of Guernsey, and eventually, on 22 July, through influential patronage links, secured an appointment as Assistant-Adjutant-General for the London district.

Macquarie now found himself moving in social circles higher than he had ever enjoyed before, mixing with royalty and people of rank and wealth. He attended his superiors at numerous regimental military reviews and dinners, and joining fashionable gatherings and routs in various stately homes and country residences; he preened himself, ordering a full suit of regimentals for the 86th. Regiment and other expensive articles of clothing; and ingratiated himself with members of the aristocracy with the presentation of gifts and tokens. He visited the theatre, ballet and opera; moved residence from Leicester Square to fashionable St. James; purchased and stabled two new black chargers — until finally he was forced to write to his friend and banker, Charles Forbes, in India to request that he urgently remit to him £1000 from his Bombay account because his current living expenses were now more than double the annual income of his salary and allowances.

Macquarie was a 'man about the town' and displayed many of the traits that London society had come to expect from 'nabobs' recently returned from India.