Cashiering (or degradation ceremony) generally within military forces is a ritual dismissal of an individual from some position of responsibility for a breach of discipline. From the Flemish 'Kasseren' the phrase entered the English language in the late 16th century, during the wars in the Low Countries. Although the O.E.D. states that the first printed use in this sense appears in Shakespeare's Othello (1603), it appeared in the 1595 tract The Estate of English Fugitives by Lewes Lewkenor, 'imploring his help and assistance in so hard an extremity, who for recompence, very charitably cashiered them all without the receipt of one penny.'