As fascinating as all these different aspects of the early Roxburghe Club's activities are, they inevitably lead to the question of what effect it was having outside the realm of antiquarian book collecting. While it is, of course, difficult to prove categorically the effects on literature or culture that have proceeded directly from the activities of the Roxburghe Club, it can at the very least be stated that the club was in the vanguard of a number of changes that were going on at that time and that in some cases acted as the blueprint or inspiration for other pioneers in these fields. The most obvious, but also the most easily overlooked, way in which the early Roxburghe Club has influenced the modern literary world is in its longevity and continuity. Since its acclaimed publication of Havelok the Dane and despite a rocky period during which the club came perilously close to ending, it has attracted increasing praise for its volumes and continued to build on the legacy of the pioneers of its early days, gradually evolving into the more recognizably modern face of a club which produces editions acclaimed equally for their literary significance, scholarly value and typographic beauty.

While the present-day club has, no doubt, the satisfaction of having eventually received its due acclaim, scholars have remained slow to recognize the serious intent of the early club, often viewing its activities as uninformed, with shallow self- interest the prime motivation among club members and antiquarian literature acting as merely an excuse for forming a club. This is to overlook that the Georgian era, including its intellectual and scholarly life, was one of sociability and that it contained a multitude of easily accessible, fully established and socially approved clubs available to wealthy men in the early nineteenth century. Antiquarian societies, professional guilds, drinking clubs, sporting and gambling clubs, dining societies and clubs built solely on the qualification of class were all available and were indeed already frequented by the members of the Roxburghe. There was little reason to go to the expense and effort required to create a new club unless it specifically catered to an interest and answered a need not already being met by existing means.