A party known as the Disinherited (senior Anglo-Scottish Nobles on the losing side after Bannockburn) lured Edward Balliol, son of former King John of Scotland from France in 1331, with the aim of restoring him to the throne and their privileges.

Throughout the winter and spring of 1332 the Disinherited led by a veteran campaigner Henry de Beaumont and Balliol, with tacit support, but outward neutrality from Edward III, were gathering supplies and men for the invasion of Scotland.

The last of the old guard Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray, Bruce's nephew died in July and the leadership crisis in Scotland made it ripe for the picking.

Upon his release in 1334, he started raiding Galloway under the command of John Randolph, 3rd Earl of Moray, capturing Guy II, Count of Namur at the Battle of Boroughmuir.

Douglas returned to his lands in Lothian and as he had a pitiful amount of tenantry to draw upon, he organised a company of men that would follow him based on his martial prowess.

"The armed bands led by Douglas, his contemporary Alexander Ramsay and others lived 'in poverty' and 'like shadows', fighting a guerrilla war against the English....Ramsay based his followers in a network of caves at Hawthorndean in Midlothian, while Douglas, operated from lairs in the [Ettrick] Forest or the Pentland Hills, was wounded twice and risked capture ambushing larger English forces.

In September 1335, the rump of the Bruce party, gathered at Dumbarton Castle and re-elected as Guardian of the realm, Sir Andrew Murray, son of William Wallace's comrade and his namesake.

This had the desired effect and Strathbogie led his men in a downhill charge; but their ranks began to break on reaching a burn, and Douglas ordered a counter-charge.

Unable to escape, and refusing to surrender, Strathbogie stood with his back to an oak tree and was killed in a last stand with a small group of followers, including Walter and Thomas Comyn.

The battle of Culblean, though by no means the largest confrontation in the conflict was pivotal in the fortunes of the followers of David Bruce, and heavily demoralised the forces of Baliol.

[3] In the later 1330s Douglas continued to consolidate his powerbase in Southern Scotland using the Great Forest of Ettrick as cover to mount increasingly punishing raids upon the English, as had "The Good Sir James" before him.

While his predecessor "The Good Sir James" had been tied by bonds of personal friendship and loyalty to The Bruce, there were no such links between the exiled David II and the remaining Guardian, Robert Stewart.

To ensure that his efforts to secure his pre-eminence were not in vain, Douglas decided to visit King David in France in an attempt to forge a friendship between them.

In September of the same year, perhaps in recognition of his loss of the earldom, King David granted the forfeited lands of Sir James Lovell, in Eskdale and Ewesdale, to Douglas.

[5] Douglas and his compatriot Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie had a keen rivalry between them, which may have been exacerbated into jealousy, by a duel which took place in December 1341.

King David gladly obliged and sallied forth into England with 12,000 men who wrecked and plundered parts of Cumberland and Northumberland before entering Durham where they made camp at Bearpark to the west of the city.

On 17 October, Sir William Douglas allowed his men to go on a rampage throughout Durham straying as far south as Ferryhill where to their surprise they encountered part of an English army of some 6,000 to 7,000 which pursued them north.

Under the leadership of Sir Ralph Neville and supported by the men of Thomas Rokeby and Lord Percy, the English were successful in this initial encounter and a number of Scots lost their lives.

Although some accounts say that King David was forced to flee the field others state, more plausibly, that he held his ground surrounded by his loyal household knights and esquires, knocking out two of the teeth of his captor, John de Coupland, with his mailed fist.

Having engaged in this act of treason, the Knight of Liddesdale was set free and returned to Scotland in July, 1352, counting on the support of Scots sympathetic to England to aid him in his scheme.

[13][14] The Knight of Liddesdale discovered that much had changed in Scotland during his eleven years of captivity, not least of which was that William, Lord (afterwards Earl) of Douglas had filled the power vacuum created by his absence.

In fact, when the Knight of Liddesdale was coming north into England to betray his country, the Lord Douglas was fighting to keep the English south of the Scottish Border.

William of Liddesdale's body was taken first to Linden Kirk, a chapel in Ettrick, and then on to Melrose Abbey for burial in front of the altar of St. Bridget (the patron saint of Clan Douglas).

The historian David Hume of Godscroft (d. 1629) considered the murder an act of jealous rage, brought on by the Knight's attentions to the Countess of Douglas, a notion that had become the subject of a popular ballad.

[16] On 8 October 1354 Edward III seized Hermitage Castle, but returned it to Elizabeth, the widow of the Knight, after she swore fealty to him and agreed to allow an English garrison to be kept there.