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 absence of all reference to it in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ of the sixteenth century, and its historical inaccuracy, go far to support the conclusion that it is not of Elizabethan origin. There is evidence, however, to prove that there once existed two undoubtedly sixteenth-century ballads concerning Lord Willoughby¾the one entitled ‘Lord Willobie's Welcome Home,’ and the other ‘Lord Willoughby's March;’ but neither of these is now extant. ‘The good Lord Willoughbey’ mentioned more than once in the ballad of ‘Flodden Field’ (Percy Folio MS., ed. Hales and Furnivall, i. 329) is a description of Sir John Willoughby, a relative of Bertie's mother, and does not of course concern Bertie himself.

[The account of Bertie in Five Generations of a Loyal House, by Lady Georgina Bertie (1845), pt. i. 57-401, is very complete, and gives copious extracts from his numerous letters and journals preserved at the Record Office. A memoir of Peregrine Bertie, by a descendant of the fourth generation, edited by C. H. P[arry], 1838, is rich in genealogical tables, but is otherwise of little value. Henry of Navarre's letters to Willoughby are printed in Lettres Missives de Henri IV, t. iii. (in Collection de Documents Inédits). The interesting questions connected with the Willoughby Ballads are ably and fully discussed by the Rev. J. W. Ebsworth in the Ballad Society's reprint of the Roxburghe Ballads, iv. 4-11. See also Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth (1754); Fuller's Worthies; Cal. State Papers, 1585-1601; Strype's Annals; Leycester Correspondence, 1585-6 (Camd. Soc.); Froude's Hist. England.]

 BERTIE, RICHARD (1517–1582), husband of the Duchess Dowager of Suffolk, was son and heir of Thomas Bertie, of Bersted, in Kent, captain of Hurst Castle, in Hampshire. He was born in the latter county about Christmas Day 1517. He was admitted a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in February 153S-4, proceeded B. A. in 1537, and is said to have been a fellow of that house. Subsequently he joined the household of Sir Thomas Wriothesley, lord chancellor, and ultimately earl of Southampton. He was reputed to be a very accomplished gentleman, "well versed in the Latin, French, and Italian languages, bold and shrewd in discourse, and Quick at repartee. In 1552 he married Catharine, duchess dowager of Suffolk, who was also in her own right Baroness Willoughby of ISresby [see Bertie, Catharine (DNB00)]. On Good Friday 1553-4 he appeared under compulsory process before Bishop Gardiner, the lord chancellor, at his residence, Winchester House, in Southwark, and on the following day a singular conversation respecting the Duchess of Suffolk passed between them. The bishop referred to three particulars in which that lady had given him offence. In the lifetime of the duke she had at a dinner selected the bishop as the man she loved least. In her progress she had caused a dog to be carried in a rochet, calling it in derision by the name of Gardiner. When the bishop was in the Tower he veiled his bonnet to her out of his chamber window, whereupon she remarked that it was merry with the lambs when the wolf was shut up. In fine, Bertie was urged by the bishop to persuade the duchess to conform to the catholic religion. Bertie frankly declared, however, that that would be quite hopeless unless she could be satisfied of the truth of Catholicism. He was then dismissed in a friendly manner, and soon afterwards contrived, through the bishop's instrumentality, to obtain the queen's license to leave the realm, and to pass and repass at pleasure, for the Surpose of obtaining payment of certain debts ue from the emperor and others abroad to the duchess as executrix of her former husband. He sailed from England in June 1554. Subsequent events impressed him with a sense of the danger to which the duchess would be exposed by remaining in this country; he therefore returned to England, and on 1 Jan. 1554-5, with much difficulty and risk, got her away from London in disguise, with a few attendants. They lay hid in Kent until 5 Feb., when they embarked at Gravesend, and thence went to Santon in Cleves; but they were soon obliged to leave that place by night. After enduring great hardships they reached Wesel, where on their arrival they could find no shelter, and suffering from cold and hunger they were about to pass the nicrht in the church porch, when they casually discovered Francis de Rivers, minister of the refugee Walloons there, by whose kind aid they were comfortably settled in a hired cottage. There the ducness was delivered of a son, who, from the circumstances of his birth abroad, during the wanderings of his parents, was named Peregrine, and who afterwards became Lord Willoughby de Eresby [see Bertie, Peregrine (DNB00)].

Bertie and the duchess found themselves insecure at Wesel, as a plan to entrap them had been matured by Lord Paget. On a friendly hint from Sir John Mason they therefore removed first to Strasburg, and then to Weinheim, in the palatinate of the Rhine, where they remained until they began to be in want and almost in despair. At this juncture they received a kind invitation from Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland, who had been apprised by John Alasko [see ] of their distress. In April 1557 they left