A small portion of Newcastle’s horse ran away and Fairfax, with about 400 men, made the mistake of following them for some distance towards York. Then it occurred to him that he had better return to see how the rest of his cavalry was faring; so he galloped back.
He says:[106] “Having charged through the enemy, my men going after in pursuit, and myself returning back to my other troops, I was got-in among the enemy who stood, up and down the field, in several bodies of horse. So, taking the signal out of my hat, I passed through them for one of their own commanders, and got to my Lord of Manchester’s horse.”
[106] Short Memorial. Masères’s Tracts.
During the temporary absence of Fairfax, the main body of his cavalry had fallen into some confusion, and Goring seized the opportunity of making a vigorous charge upon it. The King’s old horse, “veterans of hard service and fame,” were more than the newly hired cavalry of the Roundheads could withstand and a rout set in. Goring had a cry raised of “See they run in the rear,” on hearing which those in the van turned tail and began to run themselves. The Ayrshire Lancers and the regiments of Lord Eglinton, whose son was mortally wounded in this battle, held their ground for some time; but the stampede of the routed van at last bore them with it to the rear. Then there was a general rush for the bridge over the ditch, which some of the defeated foot had not yet crossed, and the Parliamentary cavalry and infantry became hopelessly mixed up, many men on foot being trampled upon by the horses of their own comrades.
When the Roundhead troops had returned to their own side of the ditch, the Royalist cavalry pursued them headlong. Heath says, “the Scots some of them ran ten miles on end, and a wee bit, crying quarter, with other lamentable expressions of fear”. Arthur Trevor in a letter to Ormonde, says that the Scottish cavalry kept galloping away, crying “Wae’s us! Wae’s us! We’re a’ undone.”
And many a bonny Scot, aghast,
Spurring his palfrey northward, passed,
Cursing the day when zeal or meed
First lured their Lesley o’er the Tweed.
Rokeby.