SOURCE: Rockett, William. “Historical Topography and British History in Camden's Britannia.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 26, no. 1 (winter 1990): 71-80.

In the following essay, Rockett discusses Camden's method in documenting and narrating Britain's Roman past, acknowledging the author's debt to continental European sources and positing that Camden's efforts established continuity, solidarity, and historical inevitability for the British nation.

Britain acquired a national history only after its coherence as a territorial entity had been established, and these two components of the national identity—territorial and historical definition—were products of the Tudor era. Cromwell reordered England's constitution by cutting off Rome's entitlement to English taxes and then building a program of reform on the related concepts of national sovereignty and the imperial status of the Crown.¹ These were enacted by means of statute. Statute was also a device for achieving territorial unification. There was first an act for...