The old strayed badly in the recent past (9)
I believe the answer is:
yesterday
'the recent past' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'the old strayed badly' is the wordplay.
'the old' becomes 'ye' (resembles a historical spelling of 'the').
'badly' is an anagram indicator (letters in the wrong order).
'strayed' with letters rearranged gives 'sterday'.
'ye'+'sterday'='YESTERDAY'
'in' is the link.
(Other definitions for yesterday that I've seen before include "Song about break-up" , "Recent time" , "not so long ago" , "Day before today" , "back then" .)