At the centre of the hub of all pan-English interactions was the person and office of the king himself. The Crown reached out physically and symbolically to every corner of the realm through the king's highways, a physical network that bound England together. Proclaiming and encouraging interactions, the ‘royal road’ in Cornwall was a monumental testament to the county's many connections east of the Tamar. Even on those rare occasions when parts of the route were ‘obstructed by force’, as they allegedly were in c. 1295, when Ranulph Giffard, Joan his mother and other malefactors were accused of committing diverse highway banditries, everyone was aware that this royal road linked them and their peninsula to the king himself. After all, county folk went so far as to claim that highway robbery of this sort was not only a ‘hindrance’ in Cornwall, but that it was costing Edward I a full two marks each year.

Emerging as no passive entity, the Crown actively deployed administrators across the kingdom in the defence of its interests. It follows that royal government introduced a striking profusion of ‘outsiders’ into Cornwall. For example, the king is often found dispatching sergeants-at-arms to the county who served as his ‘eyes and ears’ in the locality. During the course of their duties these officials closely supervised government in Cornwall, reporting back to their master about conditions in the far south west. It seems that at times they engaged in activities beyond their official business, something suggested by the fact that in 1361 the sergeant William Walklett owed £60 to one Michael Ude of St Columb Major. The Crown is found sending other employees to Cornwall on an even more ad hoc basis, as in 1316 for example, when the London goldsmith John de Castleare travelled there on what was termed Edward II's ‘business’. Numerous royal clerks also made their way to the peninsula, especially those who oversaw royal mineral rights in the south west. The controllers of the king's silver and lead mines in Cornwall and Devon, among them Thomas de Swavesey of Cambridgeshire, managed the extraction of ore and investigated new metalliferous deposits.