In 1650 James Mowat wrote in a letter to a business associate in Edinburgh that ‘if you werre hier you could gaine what you please, for theris many english and severall Scots that you might deall with’. The recipient of this letter was none other than John Clerk of Penicuik. As has been made apparent throughout this volume, Clerk was at the heart of a wide-ranging network of Scottish individuals and, along with other prolific Scots including Michel Mel in Dieppe and William Popple in Bordeaux, he not only pursued Franco-Scottish commerce but encouraged the participation of other Scots in these endeavours despite the inclement political climate. He was able to do this because of his own skills and knowledge, but he also drew on a wide range of networks and associations fostered over a long period.

Though the primary purpose of this book has been to explore the specific Franco-Scottish relationship, limiting focus to the Scottish experience leaves a great deal unsaid about the wider British agenda. As suggested by Mowat the networks fostered by Scottish mercantile agents in France during the long seventeenth century were not exclusively Scottish. English as well as Irish individuals participated in French commerce, if in different circumstances and with varying levels of success. The British perspective is one that is particularly pertinent in a period when the domestic political status of the three kingdoms of Britain was changing. As already discussed, the events of 1560 have been heralded not only as the moment the Auld Alliance ended, but as the beginning of closer relations between Scotland and England, apparently cemented by the 1603 and 1707 unions.