Richard Bertie (ca. 1517 – 9 April 1582) was an English landowner and religious evangelical.[1] He was the second husband of Catherine Willoughby, 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, Duchess Dowager of Suffolk and a woman who Henry VIII was considering as his seventh wife shortly before his death; she also received a proposal from the King of Poland.
Richard Bertie was from an unusually humble stock for the connections he made. He was the son of Thomas Bertie (ca. 1480-bef. 5 June 1555), Captain of Hurst Castle and a master mason, and Aline Say. His paternal grandfather Robert Bertie (died 1501/2[2]) was also a stonemason at Bearsted, Kent, and was married to one Marion, who died after June 1509, by whom he had two more children, a daughter Joan Bertie and a son William Bertie, born after 1480.[3] He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 17 February 1533/1534.
Richard was the father of Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent and Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, prominent Protestants during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Berties had married for love around 1553, after Bertie had for several years served the Duchess as her Master of the Horse and Gentleman Usher. The family fled England during the reign of Mary I and the Counter-Reformation. They fled first to Cleves and then Poland, despite the Duchess being one of the richest and most powerful women in England. They returned soon after the accession of Elizabeth I. Their story is recorded in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
Bertie was Member of Parliament (MP) for Lincolnshire from 1562 to 1567. In 1564 he attended Queen Elizabeth I in her visit to Cambridge University, and was granted an MA by the university.[4] In 1570 he unsuccessfully claimed the Barony Willoughby de Eresby in right of his wife.[5]