BERTIE, Norreys (?1718-1766), of Weston-on-the Green, Oxon.

Bertie’s grandfather, Henry Bertie, M.P. Oxford 1685-7 and 1689-95, a brother of the 1st Earl of Abingdon, acquired Weston-on-the-Green by his marriage to the daughter and heir of Sir Edward Norreys, M.P. Oxfordshire 1675-79 and Oxford 1701-8, whose family had often represented the county. His father had been suggested as a possible county member in 1721.HMC Portland, vii. 296. Returned for Oxfordshire unopposed as a Tory at a by-election in 1743, he voted with the Opposition, speaking against the vote for the troops in Flanders in January 1744, when he said that there could be no better time for disbanding the army.Almon’s Debates, i. 171-2. He also spoke against the Hanoverians in January 1744 and April 1746. During the 1745 rebellion he refused to join the county association in defence of the Hanoverian succession.R. J. Robson, Oxfordshire Election of 1745, p. 2. Returned again in 1747, he opposed the regency bill in 1751,

thinking penal laws dangerous in the hands of ten subjects equal to himself, and that he was serving his country while he delayed the bill even by speaking.

The same year he seconded a motion for a reduction in the army.Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 133, 213.

He did not stand in 1754, but supported the Tory candidates and was described by a Whig pamphleteer as ‘an implacable enemy to Hanover’, who ‘served his country faithfully in many Parliaments by opposing all taxes, abusing all ministers, and franking the letters of his party’.Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 1 Mar. 1753, quoted Robson, 37, 38-39. He spent the last years of his life abroad, dying at Ghent 25 Oct. 1766.