A year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal favour. On the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event—to those who took part in it—the first visit of a King to Scotland since the Union of Parliaments, Raeburn was presented to George IV. and knighted. His fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, Alexander Nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." And in the following May, the King appointed him his "limner and painter in Scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and advantages thereto belonging."
Raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. In July, a day or two after returning from an archaeological excursion in Fifeshire with, amongst others, Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, he became suddenly ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead.
[[1]] All Raeburn's biographers follow Cunningham in stating that Raeburn succeeded to St Bernard's on the death of his brother in 1787 or 1788. It was not so, however. The intimation in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, of 13th December 1810, reads, "Died on the 6th December Mr William Raeburn, manufacturer, Stockbridge"; and the title deeds of St Bernard's show that the artist purchased it from the trustees of the late Mrs Margaret Ross in October 1809.
[[2]] Henry Raeburn & Co.'s affairs were not settled until March 1810.
[[3]] That his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly prosperous before this is apparent from his having purchased St Bernard's in 1809.