The Picts' Wall and the union of the two crowns (Hadrian's Wall, James-VI and James-I)

In 1603, James VI and I inherited the throne of England. On coming to power, he announced his project for union and for renaming his two kingdoms 'Great Britain'. This article traces what happens to the Picts' Wall (Hadrian's Wall) in the aftermath of these events. The wall becomes a focus through which the new shape of the nation could be discussed. James himself mentions it in his opening speech to Parliament and the antiquarian, William Camden, dedicates a whole section to the wall in his Britannia following James' accession. In the antiquarianism of Camden, as well as in Speed's contemporary atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, the figures of the 'ruin', and the ruin of the Picts' Wall in particular, is seen to reveal the ironies of James' union project, a project for union that alludes to a history of conflict. This is related to the more abstract idea that a spatialized understanding of history may always render ironic the certainties of a history based on linear narrative. In this case, the narrative of national origins is rendered ironic through the anachronistic presence of ruins, structures which live beyond their own time to question the security of any current understanding of historical narrative.