BERTIE, Albemarle (1744-1818), of Uffington, nr. Stamford, Lincs.

Bertie is best known as the ‘Col. B.’ of the diaries of his friend John Byng, in which he figured as a restless traveller ‘who cannot endure a day in a place’, of insatiable ‘family curiosity’ in his tours of Lincolnshire, ‘from choice and ill health driving himself in a phaeton’. Those idyllic days ended abruptly with Bertie’s responsibility for raising a regiment of volunteers, and his marriage: he was, as Byng put it, ‘translated like Enoch’.Torrington Diaries, ii. 244, 401; iv. 46.

In 1801 Bertie was Lord Exeter’s nominee for a vacant seat for Stamford, a borough which his family once controlled. He was connected by marriage as well as by neighbourhood to Lord Exeter. He was an inactive Member, no speech of his being known. He voted against Addington on defence, 23 and as Apr. 1804, 25 and was listed a follower of Pitt in September. Recommending him to the King for the command of the 77th regiment, 14 June 1804, the Duke of York added that he had reason to believe ‘that the difference of emolument is of great consequence’.Geo. III Corresp. iv. 2882. In July 1805 he was listed a doubtful Pittite. On 30 Apr. 1806 he was in the majority for the repeal of Pitt’s Additional Force Act. On 16 Mar. 1807 he obtained six weeks’ leave of absence for illness, but he was alleged to have come up in April in support of the new ministry.Stamford Town Hall, Phillips mss 14, A Letter to John Lord Henniker ... by Nicholas Fenton, yeoman (14 Apr. 1810). He again took a month’s leave for the same reason on 30 Mar. 1808. In the following year he succeeded to an earldom on the death of a distant relation. A new writ for Stamford was issued prematurely on 14 Feb., vice Bertie, called to the Upper House; it was superseded by another, 17 Feb., vice Bertie, vacated his seat, until Bertie’s claim to the honour was made good.Parl. Deb. xii. 655. He died 18 Sept. 1818.