Norreys Bertie

Norreys Bertie (?1718 – 25 October 1766) was an English Tory politician. From a junior branch of the Bertie family which had inherited estates at Weston-on-the-Green in Oxfordshire, he represented that county in Parliament from 1743 until standing down before the bitterly contested 1754 election. He was unfriendly to the Hanoverian succession and sat in opposition to the government.

Norreys was the son of James Bertie (d. 1728), of Springfield, Essex, and Elizabeth Harris, and grandson of Hon. Henry Bertie and Philadelphia Norreys. In 1734, he succeeded his grandfather Henry in the family estates, including Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire, brought into the family by Philadelphia.^[1] He matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford on 5 December 1734, at the age of 16. He received his MA on 27 May 1738.^[2]

At the 1741 election, his second cousin once removed, the Earl of Abingdon, supported him as a Tory candidate for Westbury.^[3] Bertie and the opposition Whig John Bance were both defeated by the Government candidates, Joseph Townshend and Hon. George Evans.^[4] He stood again in 1743, at a by-election in Oxfordshire following the succession of the 3rd Earl of Lichfield to the peerage. Oxfordshire was a Tory stronghold in which the Bertie and Norreys families had traditionally been prominent,^[5] and Bertie was returned unopposed. He sat in opposition to the Carteret and Pelham ministries, and in the debate in January 1744, spoke for the recall and disbanding of the British troops in Flanders. He also opposed the employment of Hanoverian troops, and refused to join the Oxfordshire association in defense of the Hanoverian succession during the Jacobite rising of 1745.^[1] At the 1747 election, he was returned unopposed in Oxfordshire,^[5] and for unknown reasons received a single vote at Westbury (where the Abingdon interest backed Bance and the Tory Paul Methuen).^[3][4] He opposed the regency bill in 1751, and seconded a motion for the reduction of the army in that year.^[1]

At the 1754 election, Bertie stood down but continued to support the Tory candidates for Oxfordshire, which experienced a particularly tempestuous poll. Bertie spent the end of his life on the continent and died at Ghent in 1766.^[1] Unmarried, he left his estate to his third cousin once removed, Captain Peregrine Bertie.^[6]

References

1. Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "BERTIE, Norreys (?1718-1766), of Weston-on-the Green, Oxon.". In Sedgwick, Romney. The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust.
2. Foster, Joseph, ed. (1891). Alumni Oxonienses 1715-1886. Oxford. p. 102.
3. Wiliams, William Retlaw (1899). The Parliamentary History of the County of Oxford. Brecknock: Edwin Davies. p. 76.
4. Lea, R. S. (1970). "Westbury". In Sedgwick, Romney. The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust.
5. Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "Oxfordshire". In Sedgwick, Romney. The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust.
6. Thorne, R.G. (1986). "BERTIE, Hon. Peregrine Francis (1741-90), of Weston-on-the-Green, Oxon. and Frilsham, Berks.". In Thorne, R. G. The House of Commons 1790-1820. The History of Parliament Trust.