If we attempt to draw these various strands together, one important point to emerge is how strongly interlinked was each and every one of these ‘forms’ of connectivity. Let us consider the case of the Sergeaux family of Colquite near Bodmin. Sir Richard Sergeaux served many times on royal commissions in Cornwall, representing the county in no fewer than ten parliaments. Along with his kinsman, John, he sailed to France and fought there for the Black Prince, who showed his appreciation of his services by rewarding him with seigniorial office at home. A forceful character, Sir Richard tenaciously defended his patrimony in both the local and central courts, while finding the time to engage in the extraction, selling and shipping of tin. The Sergeauxs put their landed, mineral and marine resources to good effect. Sir Richard married well twice, the first time securing the hand of a Bodrugan heiress and then after her death marrying Philippa, the illegitimate granddaughter of the earl of Arundel. Taking care to sponsor the education of their gifted illegitimate sons, the family saw Michael Sergeaux, who took holy orders, rise to a clerkship in the admiralty and later to the deanery of Arches itself.

Sir Richard's deathbed grant of 1393 bore witness to his wealth of good connections. In an agreement made in London and witnessed by William, Lord Botreaux and Guy Mone, the subsequent keeper of the privy seal and bishop of St Davids, he charged his two kinsmen Michael and John Sergeaux, along with Edward Courtenay, the earl of Devon, and Thomas Arundel, the archbishop of York, to dispose of his goods in accordance with his wishes. Sir Richard's estates were later to pass to his daughters, one of whom, Alice, was to marry the earl of Oxford, while another, Elizabeth, was already betrothed to the Essex lawyer Sir William Marny. From all this activity we can see that the Sergeauxs’ experience corresponds to Ranulph Higden's characterisation of his fellow Englishmen as restless and ambitious, endlessly travelling in search of riches elsewhere.