Michael Lynch points out that Robert II's reign from 1371 until the lieutenancy of Carrick in 1384 had been one exemplified by continued prosperity and stability – a time which Abbot Bower described as a period of "tranquility, prosperity and peace". Lynch suggests that the troubles of the 1450s between James II and the Douglases (which some historians have interpreted as the legacy of Robert II's policy of encouraging powerful lordships), was in fact a continuation of David II's build-up of local lords in the Marches and Galloway—Robert was satisfied with government to leave alone the Douglas and the Stewart earls in their fiefdoms. The weakening of government if anything, Lynch suggests, came not before the 1384 coup but after it, despite the fact that the coup had at its root Robert II's favouring of his third son, Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan (known as the Wolf of Badenoch).