2110-3-10-2

[stains at top left] [top right] [L.S. AMERY] 9 Chelsea Embankment London SW3. [left] AMERY (underlined)[JAS handwriting] ADMIRALTY S.W. [right] PATH OF THE [right] KING [JAS handwriting] May 8th 1921

My dear John,

I have just been reading your "Path of the King" with the keenest interest, both because of the excellence of the story and because the idea itself and the names and places you use (Aimery, Jasper, Lustleigh) touch upon my own personal legend. I don't think I have ever spoken to you about the history of the name Amery, but it could be made quite an interesting story if any one ever took the trouble to work it up, which I am ashamed to say I have never done, thought(t marked out) I have got some odd notes mixed among my papers somewhere. An unusual name, especially in the days before parents gave their children names out of novels, generally means some relation of descent of kinship, and for the thread of a story is almost as good as a ring of Viking gold. Here are a few jottings for the chapters of such a story.

The Amalings were the ancient and senior royal house among the Goths (the Visgothic Baltings were the junior), descended from Amala, officially, I believe, son of Odin. Personally, in these days of scepticism, I am not sure about Odin, and would like to fancy that they were descended from

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[Admiralty S.W. ]

some kingly and wise bringer of civilisation from a foreign land. Odysseus. much enduring and free of counsel (Amal is variously interpreted as counsel or effort) in those later years when he wandered far inland to a country where they thought his cars were winnowing fans, may have ended his days among the simple Goths, and taught them runes and Kingship.

Fourteenth from Amala (this won't fit chronologically with Odysseus ? ) and greatest of all the Goths was Theodoric, conqueror of Italy and patron of learning. His son-in-law the Balting Alaric II was defeated and slain by Clovis the Frank in 507, and his widow fled with the infant Amalaric to Spain where he ruled under the tutelage of Theodoric's general Theudis. Some twenty five years later Theudis had the young King murdered and reigned in his stead. Amalaric, who was a keen Arian, had quarreled bitterly with his wife Clotilda, daughter of Clovis, who was an ardent Catholic, and shortly before his murder she had fled to the court of her brother Hildebert. Perhaps she took her young children with her, and they may have grown up as Franks and settled in France, transmitting their Gothic names and especially the peculiar and prized Amala name to their descendants. Or the children may have been left in Spain, and without ever again asserting

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[ADMIRALTY S.W.]

a claim to the Kingship they and their descendants may have lived on there and only flew to France after the final overthrow of the Visigothic Kingdom at the Guadalete. Anyhow, the next I know of the name is when one Amalric, Amaury, or Amery seems in Charlemagne's reign or (crossed out) soon after (end crossed out) thereabout to have established himself as Count(crossed out) Viscount of Thouars in Poitou.

His descendents, mostly Amerys, waxed strong in the next two centuries, fought and intermarried with their naighbours in Anjou, Maine and Brittany, and for a while Thouars seems to have promised to become one of the most powerful states in Western France. At Hastings Amery IV(handwritten) of Thouars commanded the barons of Poitou and Maine on the inside left [* above left] - Alain of(crossed out) Fergert with his Bretons being on the actual left wing.

Amery took his due share of the spoil in lands in various parts of England.

After that comes a chapter - the most interesting of the lot, but one whose threads I have never attempted properly to link up - in which the name crops up in the thick of everything that was doing in Western France, the Crusades and in England. Apart from the original family at Thouars it is a regularly recurrent name with the de Lusignans ( a junior branch, perhaps, Lusignan lies some little way south of Thouars), the (handwritten on bottom of page) * With some credit the chronicler says "mult reçu le jor grand pris"

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Counts of Anjou, and the de Montfort's (of Montfort l' Amauri). Fulk of Anjou had two sons, Geoffrey Plantagenet the eldest, father of Henry II, and Amery, the first crusading King of Jerusalem to be actually born in the Holy Land. This Amery was an adventurous spirit and made a most sporting, and for a few months successful, attempt to annex Egypt. His daughter married Amery de Lusignan. who figures in history as Amery II of Jerusalem and as Amery I King of Cyprus, ancestor of a long line of Lusignan Kings of Cyprus, including one or two more Amerys. Both the Amerys of Jerusalem and several of the Kings of Cyprus seem to have been men of character, political sense, and lovers of history, law and learning generally.

To come back West, Simon IV of Montfort l' Amauri, the great persecutor of the Albigeneses, has an eldest son Amery or Amauri who, like your Aimery in "Eyes of Youth", was a student and an ardent crusader. (handwritten line above)He was Constable of France and died on crusade in 1239. His younger brother Simon de Montfort had some little say in starting that respectable institution, the Mother of Parliaments. Another Amery of that time, Amery of Bens, near Chartres, was a distinguished theologian, and held the only true faith, viz., the pantheism afterwards associated

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with Spinoza. He died of sorrow at being excommunicated and thus escaped the flames which, after his death, speedily purged the Church of the little sect of Amalricians.

I don't know if fancy dare suggest some stray chain of kinship from England, France or Cyprus, possibly from remote Ostrogothic days, down to the(crossed out) 15th century Italy and Amerigo Vespucci who, very undeservedlY, I fear, became godfather to the continent of America. But when Sam Hughes once wished to christen with my name an infant township - still resolutely resolved not to grow - on the prairie, of whose site we were joint partners, I protested that I was satisfied with having the Continent called after my name and did not begrudge the Rev. W. Lloyd the chance of calling it Lloydminster. Howbeit there is an Amery in Wisconsin, called after some worthy Devon folk who settled there about 1640, with whose descendants I made acquaintance and claimed distant kin once, seeing the name on the station signboard and alighting on the chance.

To return to our Middle Ages. I have never tried to find out how far, after Hastings, the Amarys of Thouars and those in England remained one and the same or divided off. The former is rather indicated by the pretty consistent