The Battle of Culblean was fought on the 30th of November 1335, during the Second War of Scottish Independence. The Scots, led by Guardian Sir Andrew Murray, achieved victory over an Anglo-Scottish force commanded by David III Strathbogie, titular Earl of Atholl a strong supporter of Edward Balliol.
Background
After the murder of John Comyn, nephew of the former King John Balliol, by Robert Bruce and his supporters in 1306, the Scottish War of Independence was both a war of independence and a civil war, with the Balliol and Comyn parties taking the side of the English. In the winter of 1314 the Scottish Parliament, the first to meet after King Robert's victory at the Battle of Bannockburn, pronounced a formal sentence of forfeiture against all those who held land in Scotland but continued to fight on the side of the English. Thus was created a class of nobility known as the disinherited, old Balliol loyalists who would not be reconciled with the Bruce party.
The 1328 Treaty of Northampton between England and Scotland, based on a full recognition of Robert Bruce's kingship, ended any immediate prospect these men had of gaining their lost inheritance. However, the death of Bruce in 1329, and the accession to the throne of David II, his infant son, offered them a second chance. Under the leadership of Henry de Beaumont, one of their number and a veteran of the Scottish wars, a party began to take shape in the early 1330s. This party focused its hopes on Edward Balliol, son of the former King John, as the rightful King of Scotland. In 1332 Beaumont and Balliol launched a seaborne invasion of Scotland, winning a victory at the Battle of Dupplin Moor; but with only limited support in the country they were expelled by the end of the year. Edward III, the young English king, who had been playing something of a double game, then decided to declare his open support for Balliol, and the Scots were defeated once again in the summer of 1333 at the Battle of Halidon Hill. Edward Balliol was reseated on his contentious throne, but his residence proved no more certain than before. In 1335, Edward III made what was to be his greatest effort on Balliol's behalf, coming to Scotland with a large army. Unable to force the issue into an open battle, he left the disinherited to manage as best they could.
Appointment of Murray as Guardian
Although Scottish resistance was low at times, it was never completely extinguished. David II was sent to the safety of France in 1334. In September 1335, Sir Andrew Murray of Bothwell, whose father was also named Andrew, was joint commander, with William Wallace, of the victorious Scottish army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge and was appointed Guardian of Scotland by the rump of Bruce loyalists meeting in Dumbarton Castle. Within a short period, he was to become one of the country's greatest leaders, and a skilled student of the kind of guerilla warfare practised by King Robert in days past. Murray was consistent in his defence of the national cause, never at any time submitting to Edward III or Balliol, unlike Robert Stewart, nephew and heir of the infant David. The men who gathered around him at Dumbarton formed the nucleus of the national revival: the earls of March and Ross, Sir William Douglas, Maurice Murray, and William Keith. After the departure of the English king from Scotland — followed soon afterwards by Edward Balliol — Murray's chief opponent was David de Strathbogie, the titular earl of Atholl, and Balliol's chief lieutenant in the north.
St. Andrew's Day, 1335
In the late autumn of 1335, Strathbogie was operating north of the Forth, allegedly attempting to eradicate all freeholders, who from the time of William Wallace had been the backbone of Scottish resistance. Strathbogie's actions mirrored the policy of King Edward in southern Scotland, where over one hundred freeholders were forfeited in the period from 1335 to 1337. John of Fordun, a Scottish chronicler, reports the situation thus;
But the great tyranny and cruelty this earl practiced among the people words cannot bring within the mind's grasp; some he disinherited, others he murdered: and in the end, he cast in his mind how he might wipe out the freeholders from the face of the earth.