The Wars of Scottish Independence

The First (1296 to 1328) and Second (1332 to 1357) Wars of Scottish Independence, fought intermittently across the reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III over England's claim to overlordship of Scotland and Scotland's resistance to it. Edward I, having arbitrated the 1291-92 succession dispute in John Balliol's favour, provoked war by insisting on his own jurisdiction as suzerain; he invaded and deposed Balliol in 1296, then faced William Wallace's revolt, victorious for England at Falkirk in 1298 but never finally suppressed. Edward II inherited the war and lost it in practice at Bannockburn in 1314, a defeat from which Robert the Bruce's Scotland was never seriously threatened again; the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, agreed by Edward III's regency government in 1328, formally recognised Scottish independence. Edward III revived the war in 1332 in support of Edward Balliol's rival claim against the child king David II, won at Halidon Hill in 1333, and captured David II himself at Neville's Cross in 1346; sustained fighting faded into the 1357 Treaty of Berwick, though border conflict continued at lower intensity for generations after. Following the standing HistoryAtlas convention for a numbered or phased war (the Punic Wars, the World Wars, the Crusades), the two numbered wars are treated as one umbrella event, their phases named here in prose rather than minted as separate entities.