e
blue-coated Broughton horsemen had a busy time of it amongst the royalist
gunners as they rode through the battery. Earl Lindsay's Lincolnshire
regiment, which he had led pike in hand, received the brunt of the attack;
it was overpowered, and the unfortunate general left for dead with a
musket ball in his thigh. The Red Regiment moved up in support, only in
turn to be cut up and almost annihilated, and Lord Willoughby was made
prisoner also in the attempt to rescue his father the Earl. Then followed
a brilliant personal fight for the royal standard, but the Puritan
horseman Copley cut down Sir Edmund Verney, knight marshal of the King's
horse, and standard bearer, and secured the prize. The success of this
attack was largely brought about by the ruse alluded to, where,
"pretending to be friends," they broke in upon the King's regiments. If
it is true that they got so near as to shake hands, the business must have
been very simple. Verney had presentiment of his death, and the severed
hand clasping the standard shaft is said to be yet sadly searched for by
the ghost of Claydon House.[Vr] On the finger of the hand was a ring, a
king's gift. Nugent says about the standard's recapture: "The Royal
standard was taken by Mr. Young, one of Sir William Constable's ensigns,
and delivered by Lord Essex to his own Secretary, Chambers, who rode by
his side. Elated by the prize, the Secretary rode about, more proudly than
wisely, waving it round his head. Whereupon in the confusion, one of the
King's officers, Captain Smith, of the Lord John Stewart's troop, seeing
the standard captured, threw round him the orange scarf of a fallen
Parliamentarian, and riding in among the lines of his enemies, told the
Secretary that 'it were a shame that so honourable a trophy of war should
be borne by a penman.' To which suggestions the credulous guardian of this
honourable trophy consenting, surrendered it to the disguised cavalier,
who galloped back with it amain, and before evening received knighthood[4]
under its shadow."

Brooke's, Hollis', and Ballard's infantry, moved across part of the ground
abandoned by Ramsay's horse to attack the right flank of the King's
centre, an attack which soon becomes as disastrous to the Royalists as
that on the other flank where Lindsay has fallen. In fact, the regiments
of foot from the Parliamentary rear with Constable's infantry and
Stapleton's horse, made a combined assault upon the King's centre, which
t