Definition of "ventrous"

Small harme it were / For any Knight upon a ventrous Knight / Without displeasance for to prove his spere.

1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Canto 4, Verse 4

The Queens colours are his, given by the King : / Who knowes that valour should not want reward, / And ventrous Spirits, best keep Princes guard.

1656, Gioachino Greco, The royall game of cheſſe-play: Sometimes the recreation of the late king, with many of the nobility. Illustrated with almost an hundred gambetts

For all that, answered Araſpes, this ventrous boy lived many moneths among them, where his youth, and a womans habit, wherewith he was disguised, made him pass for one of their ſex.

1667, Gaultier de Coste La Calprenède (seigneur de), Sir Charles Cotterell, Cassandra: the fam'd romance. The whole work: in five parts; written originally in French, and now elegantly rendered into English, page 287