Having observed the nature of Scottish conduct during the years of conflict between 1332 and 1357, I now examine the judgements that were formed concerning soldiers and warfare. Two types of sources will be examined. Firstly, contemporary chroniclers provided commentary on the events of their day including extensive discussion of warfare. Chronicles, to some extent, reveal the perceptions of the individual authors. They also set their comments within a local context. Yet by absorbing and regurgitating royal propaganda, and giving voice to ‘nationalistic’ feelings, they also – to some degree – rise above the personal and the parochial. Of course, chronicles were not unbiased. They are predominantly the product of religious men without battlefield experience. Their description of warfare was naturally coloured by their spiritual beliefs and inherent Christian values, as well as by their own place within the social hierarchy. In order to gain a more rounded view of how war was perceived, it is important to seek an understanding of the combatant's view of the business of war. For some men, war increasingly became an occupation, one for which they had trained and into which they had invested varying sums of money in order to ensure their personal safety and to achieve a financial return. Nonetheless, for the medieval warrior there was more to fighting than simply money. Alongside the practical consideration of profit, medieval soldiers also sought more idealistic rewards in their desire to achieve honour, prowess and renown. Crucial to an analysis of the perception of war as portrayed by both chroniclers and soldiers is establishing a contemporary definition of acceptable behaviour – that is, in effect, contemporary understanding of the concept of chivalry.

Unfortunately, the sources available for this period of Anglo-Scottish warfare provide serious challenges for analysis of contemporary perceptions of war. No contemporary Scottish chronicle material survives. Accounts of the Second War of Independence compiled by John of Fordun, Andrew Wyntoun and Walter Bower were written sometime after the events of 1332–1357. Fordun's source compilation, constructed in the 1380s, has been shown to have incorporated now-lost chronicle material produced by clerical writers in St Andrews. As a continuator of Fordun's work writing in the 1440s, Bower likewise reproduces such material in his own chronicle, and adds further to it with sources of his own.