Only four years after the end of the First Scottish War of Independence in 1328, Anglo-Scottish conflict began anew in 1332. The war continued sporadically until a peace deal was agreed in 1357 as part of the negotiations for the release of the captured King David II. This conflict has, until relatively recently, received little detailed analysis. Much of what has been produced has focussed on the war as a time of fragmentary military opposition to English and pro-Balliol forces by a group of self-interested individuals, fighting for personal territorial and political gain. For some historians of mid fourteenth-century Scotland, the Scottish war effort was barely an effort at all as many who purported to support the dynasty established by Robert I sided with the alternative Balliol regime or even with Edward III. This portrayal of the renewed conflict from 1332 onwards reflects the views of contemporary Scottish chroniclers. Although mostly writing in the years following the cessation of conflict in 1357 they continued to reminisce about earlier military successes under Robert I. In so doing they allowed the Bruce victories and the romance of the war fought between 1296 and 1328 to overshadow the history of the years that followed. The pervasive nature of this orthodoxy is demonstrated in modern accounts of the war of 1332–1357 which continue to depict a period of civil war and internal strife within Scotland; rival nobles advancing private interests ahead of the independence of the kingdom; a young and naïve David II residing in France, out of touch with the realities of the changing political situation back home; and the war with England only gradually turned towards slow and painstaking recovery against Disinherited and/or English forces.

This was the historical perspective of Bruce Webster in 1998 when he focussed on the perceived nadir of Scottish fortunes in the years without royal leadership. Still, Webster's article was important because it provided balance to a well established orthodoxy advanced by historians of the reign of Edward III. For some historians of fourteenth-century England the war in Scotland was little more than an inconvenient sideshow to the more significant and successful war in France.