When Robert II came to the throne in 1371, relations between Scotland and England were comparatively tranquil. Although substantial parts of southern Scotland remained occupied by English forces – a legacy of the Second Wars of Independence (1332- c.56) – the two kingdoms were at peace thanks to an ongoing truce, and the new king was keen to maintain this détente. By the later 1370s, however, conflict was gradually re-emerging. In large part, this was the work not of King Robert, but of powerful nobles on the Anglo-Scottish border, particularly the formidable Douglas family, which took advantage of the political weakness both of Robert and of the new English boy-king, Richard II (r.1377-99), to conduct raids on English land.
The situation escalated once the Anglo-Scottish truce formally expired in 1384. Scottish raids – again orchestrated largely by powerful magnates rather than the crown – provoked two English expeditions to Scotland, in 1384 and 1385. The second of these campaigns, led by Richard II in person, was massively destructive, and it seems to have spooked the Scots into agreeing a series of new, shorter truces. By the time the last of these came due to expire in 1388, however, the political situation had changed markedly. In England, an extended political crisis beginning in 1386 severely undermined the authority of Richard II, giving the Scots – now led by Robert II’s heir, John, earl of Carrick, who had been appointed guardian of the kingdom in 1384 – an opportunity to take advantage of temporar y English weakness. The Scots, therefore, decided to attack.