Historians can easily get wrapped up in their subject and thus elevate its importance beyond what those living through it experienced, thus there can be sharp divisions about how important union was to the seventeenth-century Scot. The royal navy as part of the regal union was not something most Scots considered regularly, it only entered their worlds in wartime, and then only by the celebration of a victory or a supportive fast. For the maritime population it impinged by the fear of the press-gang, regardless of Scotland's protection, and the desire for convoy. Even those at the pinnacle of Scottish government did not deal with it on a daily or even weekly basis. However, this absence did not equate to unimportance since it dealt in that core role of governance, security. For the historian it has a second importance in that it developed a position that was nearly unique; apart from the monarchy itself, the royal navy was the only institution which had an accepted role to play in both British kingdoms. Exactly what the scope of that role was and how it should be authorised were sometimes in dispute, but the basic fact that it had one was not.

No attempt was made in the introduction, or by Tony Claydon in his critique of New British History – that it should show shared institutions, intimate connections, common cultures, and incorporating ideologies – to define what might actually make a shared institution. The most obvious is a Scottish role in running the institution. Instances of Scots having seats on the admiralty board, or both admiralties being held in common, had never been conscious attempts to systematically make the admiralty a British institution in the way the committee of both kingdoms had been in the 1640s. This did not change after parliamentary union either; Wemyss briefly held what might be considered to have been a Scottish seat on the board, but this did not last, so that there was no Scot on Edward Russell, now earl of Orford’s, board of 1709.

Certainly, more Scottish naval officers followed in Mitchell's footsteps: James Wishart joined the board in 1710, and Lord Archibald Hamilton had a long period on the board in the 1730s and 1740s. Nevertheless, Mitchell demonstrated that Scots could run the navy on account of their naval merits on either side of the union.