The word _Cavalier_ was not at first necessarily a term of reproach.
Shakspeare does not so employ it when he speaks of the gay and gallant
English eager for French invasion--
"For who is he ... that will not follow
These cull'd and choice-drawn Cavaliers to France?"
But it was most unquestionably used in a reproachful sense on the
occasion of the tumult in the reign of Charles I., probably to connect
its French origin with the un-English character of the defenders of the
Queen and her French papist adherents, to whom it was chiefly applied;
it was likewise bandied about in declarations alternately issued
on the eve of the war by the Parliament and the King, the latter
speaking of it more than once as a word much in disfavour. Charles,
when the battle of Edgehill had been fought, elaborately accuses his
antagonists--"pretenders to peace and charity"--of a hateful attempt "to
render all persons of honour, courage, and reputation, odious to the
common people under the style of _Cavaliers_, insomuch as the highways
and villages have not been safe for gentlemen to pass through without
violence or affront." Even in the very earliest popular songs on the
King's side, the word has not the place it afterwards assumed, and one
meets with Royalist poets of a comparatively sober vein,--
"Who neither love for fashion nor for fear,
As far from Roundhead as from Cavalier."
D'Ewes's earliest uses of the word, in his MS. journal, occur under 10th
January, and March 4th, 1641-2, and 3d June, 1642. In the first he is
speaking of parties who had been suspiciously entering the Tower; in the
second, of the Cavaliers at Whitehall who wounded the citizens; and in
the last of the King's party in Yorkshire.
Of the word _Roundhead_, on the other hand, and the mixed fear and
hatred it represented and provoked, decidedly the most characteristic
example is furnished by the ever quaint and entertaining Bishop Hacket,
who tells a story of a certain worthy and honest Vicar of Hampshire who
always (in such a manner as to evade the notice of one section of his
hearers while he secretly pleased the other) changed one verse in the
last verse of the Te Deum--"O Lord, in thee have I trusted, _let me
never be a Roundhead_!" William Lilly, however (_Monarchy or no Monarchy
in England_, edit. 1651), referring to tumults of which he was an
eye-witness, describes Puritans to have received the nickname as
follows: "In the general, they were very honest men and well-meaning:
some particular fools, or others, perhaps, now and then got in amongst
them, greatly to the disadvantage of the more sober. They were modest in
their apparel, but not in their language; they had the hair of their
heads very few of them longer than their ears; whereupon, it came to
pass that those who usually with their cries attended at Westminster
(Whitehall), were by a nickname called _Roundheads_. The Courtiers
again, having long hair and locks, and always swordes, at last were
called by these men _Cavaliers_: and so, so few of the vulgar knowing
the sense of the word Cavalier."--Notes to Forster's _Arrest of the Five
Members_.
Swift, regarding Cavalier in the reproachful sense, says: "Each party
grows proud of that appellation which their adversaries at first
intended as a reproach: of this sort were the Guelfs, and Ghibelines,
Huguenots, and Cavaliers."
Nevertheless, Cavalier was formerly an ordinary English term for a
horse-soldier. Kersey gives it as "a Sword-gentleman, a brave Warrior."
Nares gives it: "Cavalero, or Cavalier. Literally a Knight; but, as the
persons of chief fashion and gaiety were knights, any gallant was so
distinguished. Hence it became a term for the officers of the Court
party, in Charles I.'s wars, the gaiety of whose appearance was
strikingly opposed to the austerity and sourness of the opposite order."
_Glossary_, New Edit. 1859.
In the Roundhead accounts of the period are details of the contests and
assaults that were continually made between the years 1648 and 1658 upon
the Roundheads _abroad_, for _at home_ the Cavaliers were too weak to
indulge frequently in such manifestations of party feelings.