Accompanied by his eldest son, then 16, Macfarlane returned to Turkey in 1847. On his way home, in the summer of 1848, they visited Messina and made a tour through the kingdom of Naples, the Abruzzi, the marches of Ancona, and Rome. His wife Charlotte died in 1854 at their home in Canterbury, Kent. In July 1857 he was nominated a poor brother of the London Charterhouse, where he died on 9 December 1858.
