Thomas Sutton, comte de Clonard, though his death was lamented in a letter to the foreign minister, Vergennes, by the playwright/brasseur d'affaires Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, has long remained in the shadows, variously described as English, Scottish or even Dutch. He was, however, leader of the private interest in the French East India Company which, after the Company's suspension in 1769, organized a successful private trade to the East Indies. Like the English East India Company, the French Company, closely involved in matters of high policy and public finance, had became a battleground for conflict between rival political interests. Sutton also linked trade in the Indian Ocean to slaving voyages from the east coast of Africa (he was, though as a secondary interest, a plantation owner in Saint-Domingue). He had mining interests in Spain, and in wartime engaged in ambitious privateering ventures. In the Seven Years War and afterwards in the ill-fated Guyana (Cayenne) plantation venture, he had close ties with the duke of Choiseul (Etienne-Francois Choiseul), the dominant French politician (variously war minister, navy minister and foreign minister) from 1757 to 1770; and he had ties with all naval ministers, from the 1750s to his death in 1782.