A nobleman from Savoy, he came to England as part of the party accompanying King Henry III's bride Eleanor of Provence.

When the barons began to revolt against King Henry in the late 1250s and early 1260s, Peter was attacked and his lands and property pillaged.

[3] Peter continued to receive gifts from the king, including market rights, and the ability to take timber from the royal forests.

[3] In 1243 Peter began acting as the representative for the absent Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Boniface of Savoy, another of Queen Eleanor's uncles.

Shortly after this, Peter was ordered by the papacy to intervene in Henry's dispute with William of Raleigh, the Bishop of Winchester.

[3] Peter attended the general council of the church that was convened by Pope Innocent IV at Lyons in 1245, and then went to Savoy on a diplomatic mission for the king.

During this time he was also busy in his diocese, where he issued regulations for his clergy as well as taking possession of lands that had been granted away by his predecessors.

This led to the outbreak of dissension with the cathedral chapter of Hereford, who eventually managed to secure a favourable outcome.

The intention of the clergy had not been to raise money for the king's efforts in Sicily, and this led to Peter being universally condemned in England.

[3] Peter stayed on the continent, but in 1258 his lands in Hereford were once more attacked, and in the autumn he was ordered to return to England to be audited for his attempts to collect the Sicilian tax.

[3] In May 1263, Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester and the other lords on the Welsh Marches drove Peter from his see, in retaliation for King Henry's refusal to observe the Provisions of Oxford.

[3] While bishop, Peter founded a church in Savoy, at Aiguebelle, where he established the liturgy of the mass that was then in use in his bishopric, the Use of Hereford.

[3] The medieval writer Matthew Paris said Peter had "fox-like cunning" and that his "memory exudes a sulphurous stench".