Meanly shrinking from danger, cowardly, dastardly.
1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book III, Canto One, Stanza 22, in The Faerie Queene, Books Three and Four, edited by Dorothy Stephens, Hackett, 2006, p. 13,
Like dastard Curres, that having at a bay
The salvage beast embost in wearie chace,
Dare not adventure on the stubborne pray,
Ne byte before, but rome from place to place,
To get a snatch, when turned is his face.
verb
To dastardize.
1665, John Dryden, The Indian Emperour, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, being the Sequel of The Indian Queen, Act II, Scene 1, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12166/pg12166-images.html
Would my short life had yet a shorter date! / I'm weary of this flesh which holds us here, / And dastards manly souls with hope and fear; / These heats and colds still in our breast make war, / Agues and fevers all our passions are.