Prince Rupert, Count Palantine, a Royalist cavalry commander in the English Civil War, Anthony van Dyck, c. 1637, oil on canvas
16 June 2025
A cavalier is literally a mounted soldier, especially a gentleman. When the word is capitalized, it can refer to a supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil War. And it is an adjective meaning carefree, disdainful, or dismissive, presumably because that is an attitude evinced by such genteel cavalrymen.
The word is borrowed from multiple Romance languages. Early borrowings are from the Spanish cavallero and to a lesser degree from the Italian cavaliere and the Portuguese cavalliero. The modern English form is from the French cavalier. As with many such borrowings, the early uses in English are in a foreign context.
The earliest English use of the word I have found is in a pseudonym adopted by a 1589 pamphleteer. Pasquill “the Renowned Cavaliero” of England wrote several theological as part of the Marprelate Controversy, a pamphlet war between Puritans and defenders of the Anglican church. Pasquill took the Anglican side, and in his pamphlets debated a strawman named Marforio, who took the Puritan side. The two names were taken from the “talking statues of Rome,” Pasquino and Marforio. Pasquino is the name of a statue of Menelaus, of Iliad fame, that was unearthed in Rome in 1501 and subsequently was used as a sort of bulletin board for commentary and witticism. The statue known as Marforio often hosted pamphlets made in response to those appearing on Pasquino. The 1589 pamphlet The Returne of the Renowned Caualiero Pasquill uses as a conceit the idea that the two statues, having come to England, engage in the theological debate. The Pasquill pamphlets have been attributed to playwright and poet Thomas Nashe by some, but this attribution is doubtful.
Pasquino, the talking statue of Rome
Another early use, this time in a Spanish context, is in Edward Daunce’s 1590 A Briefe Discourse of the Spanish State:
Their chiualrie in their thieuish surprising the higher Nauarre (which they hold by force of the Popes proscription) is of like condition: whereby it may appeare that notwithstanding these Caualeros haue their Rapiers hanging point blancke, that it is their penurie at home, that giues them stomake, according to their name that they are Sagaces Hispani, to winde, or smell their neighbors cupbords abrode.
But within a decade we see cavalier used in an English context. Thomas Heywood’s 1600 play, The First and Second Partes of King Edward the Fourth. In this passage the noble Falconbridge and the common soldiers Spicing and Chub discuss who is worthy to be a knight:
Fal[conbridge]. Why this is fine, go to, knight whom thou wilt:
Spi[cing]. Who, I knight any of them? Ile sée them hangde first for a companie of tattred ragged rascailes, if I were a king, I would not knight one of them?
Chub. What not mee Caualero Chub?
The association of Cavalier with supporters of Charles I dates to 1641 when it appears in a subtitle of a pamphlet calling for the raising of a militia to defend parliament:
A True Relation of the Unparaleld Breach of Parliament, by his Maiesty as Is Conceivd the 4 of Ianuary, 1641 Being Instigated Therunto by Unadvised Counsels, under Pretence of a Legall Proceeding.
Together with a Relation of the Hostile Intention upon the House of Commons, by Captaine Hyde, and Those Other Cavaliers and Souldiers that Accompanied His Majesty in a War-like Manner, Armed with Swords, Pistols and Dragounes.
And the adjectival use, meaning careless or dismissive, appears in the decades following the Civil War. From Michael Hawke’s 1657 pamphlet Killing Is Murder, and No Murder is a response to another pamphlet, wherein it is the claimed “his calumnious scoffs are perstringed and cramb'd down his own throat”:
Besides many material passages are untouched by the other, which in this are punctually handled, and not by skippes, but litterally, and orderly decided: And also have retorted in his teeth the filth of his scurrilous and bitter taunts, and thrown them in his own face, which for the most part work more powerfully on cavalier and nimble wits then a Logical Argument.
Sources:
Daunce, Edward. A Briefe Discourse of the Spanish State. London: Richard Field, 1590, 9. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Hawke, Michael. Killing Is Murder, and No Murder. London: 1657, sig. A3v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Heywood, Thomas. The First and Second Partes of King Edward the Fourth. London: Felix Kingston for Humfrey Lownes and John Oxenbridge, 1600, sig. B4v. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cavalier, n. and adj.
Pasquill of England. The Returne of the Renowned Caualiero Pasquill of England, from the Other Side the Seas, and His Meeting with Malforius at London. London: Pepper Allie (pseud. John Charlewood), 1589. ProQuest: Early English Books Online
A True Relation of the Unparaleld Breach of Parliament. London: 1641. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
Image credits:
Prince Rupert, Count Palatine: Anthony van Dyck, c. 1637, oil on canvas. UK National Gallery. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.
Pasquino, the talking statue of Rome: Lalupa, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain work,