‘M. l’abbé Carlier, however, in his history of the duchy of Valois, claims this honour for his province, wherein he has discovered an ancient family of the same name,—a branch of which, he pretends, settled in the Cambresis, and he believes that from this branch sprung Enguerrand de Monstrelet. This opinion is advanced without proof, and the work of Monstrelet itself is sufficient to destroy it. He shows so great an affection for Picardy, in divers parts of his chronicle, that we cannot doubt of his being strongly attached to it: he is better acquainted with it than with any other parts of the realm: he enters into the fullest details concerning it: he frequently gives the names of such picard gentlemen, whether knights or esquires, as had been engaged in any battle, which he omits to do in regard to the nobility of other countries,—in the latter case, naming only the chief commanders. It is almost always from the bailiff of Amiens that he reports the royal edicts, letters missive, and ordinances, &c. which abound in the two first volumes. In short, he speaks of the Picards with so much interest, and relates their gallant actions with such pleasure, that it clearly appears that he treats them like countrymen.
‘Monstrelet was a nobleman then, and a nobleman of Picardy; but we have good reason to suspect that his birth was not spotless. John le Robert, abbot of St Aubert in Cambray from the year 1432 to that of 1469, and author of an exact journal of every thing that passed during his time in the town of Cambray and its environs, under the title of ‘Memoriaux,’[2] says plainly, ‘_qu’il fut né de bas_,’—which term, according to the glossary of du Cange, and in the opinion of learned genealogists, constantly means a natural son; for at this period, bastards were acknowledged according to the rank of their fathers. Monstrelet, therefore, was not the less noble; and the same John le Robert qualifies him, two lines higher, with the titles of ‘noble man’ and ‘esquire,’ to which he adds an eulogium, which I shall hereafter mention,—because, at the same time that it does honour to Monstrelet, it confirms the opinion I had formed of his character when attentively reading his work.