In 1848 John attempted "A reply to the Quarterly Review upon the Vestiarium Scoticum" (Edinburgh, 1848) and the two brothers then produced "Lays of the deer forest: with sketches of olden and modern deer-hunting" (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1848), but three of their benefactors, the Earl of Moray, the Marquis of Bute and Thomas Dick-Lauder, died that year and the brothers were now so discredited that Charles took his wife to Prague where their son was in the Austrian army and John followed soon after. John’s wife died at Presburg in 1862 and the brothers did not return to England until 1868. In London they then occupied themselves with research, being well-known figures in the British Museum, wearing Highland dress or military tunics and using pens embellished with gold coronets.