What to do with Amaury

Part of a letter from John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, to Pope Martin IV. This is dated April 1282 and concerns the release of Amaury de Montfort from prison.

Amaury was the youngest son of Simon de Monfort. He was the brother of Guy, the murderer of Henry of Almaine, and a papal chaplain and graduate of the Schools of Padua in Italy. Described as ‘a litigious man with a vitriolic tongue’, he accompanied his sister Eleanor in 1275 on their ill-fated voyage to North Wales. Amaury had been forbidden by Edward I from setting foot anywhere in the British Isles; in his defence Prince Llywelyn wrote to the king and claimed that Amaury had not intended to get off the ship.

Unsurprisingly, this argument cut no ice. Amaury was imprisoned at Corfe Castle for seven years, where he wrote a poem complaining of his unjust treatment. He cannot have been comforted by the knowledge that Corfe was the scene of the murder of Maud de Braose and her son, starved to death by Edward’s grandfather, King John. Later Archbishop Peckham was allowed to be Amaury’s warden, responsible for his safe-keeping. One pope after another begged Edward to release him. At last the archbishop, in a personal interview with the king at the castle of Devizes, in April 1282, got Edward’s consent to Amaury’s departure form the country.

As the archbishop observed in the report to Pope Martin IV, the timing was awkward. War in Wales had begun again, news which, in the common opinion, suggested the detention rather than the release of Amaury. The king decided to let him go against the counsel of the magnates of the realm, even though ‘the wishes and counsel of no few had been to the contrary’.

It seems the king simply wanted to be rid of the Montforts. Amaury was required to swear a solemn oath that he would never return to England. Amaury immediately went to France and on 22 May wrote to the king from Arras, thanking him for his grace, promising fidelity, and asking for liberty ‘to recover his rights’. The demand was either refused or ignored, so in December 1284 he began a suit in the court of Rome against Edmund, the king’s brother, for restitution of his inheritance. Amaury made little progress with his claim. He is known to have been in Paris in June 1286, and upon the death of his brother Guy renounced holy orders and took up knighthood. Amaury is thought to have retired to Italy and died in 1292, unmarried and childless.