Peregrine Bertie, 12th Baron Willoughby de Eresby
Peregrine Bertie, 12th Baron Willoughby de Eresby (1555-1601) was the son of Richard Bertie and Katherine, 11th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby. Richard was Katherine's second husband, the first being
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Owing to religious politics, the parents had to move outside
England and the boy was born at
Wesel on the
River Rhine.
Born on 12 October, 1555, he was baptized at the church of
Saint Willibrord on 14th October. On
Elizabeth's accession to the throne in
1558, his parents returned to England and applied for a patent of naturalization for him. He formally became English on 2 August
1559. In the later
1570s he married Mary de Vere, daughter of the
Earl of Oxford. When his mother died in
1580, he applied to assume her title and he took his seat in the
House of Lords on
16 January 1580/1.
In
1582 he was commissioned to escort the
Duke of Anjou from
Canterbury to
Antwerp. The French royal duke had arrived as a
suitor of the un-married Elizabeth. In the same year Peregrine was sent to
Denmark to invest
Frederick II with the
Order of the Garter. Peregrine arrived at
Elsinore on
22 July and left on
27 September 1582. His ulterior purpose was to obtain an understanding whereby English merchant ships would not be molested while in Danish waters. In
1585, he returned to Denmark on behalf of Elizabeth in support of
Henry of Navarre and to obtain Danish help for England's efforts on behalf of the
independent Netherlands.
These journeys were made at Peregrine's expense as his correspondence with
Francis Walsingham made clear, he was becoming desperate to be paid or to escape from the diplomatic duties. After two and a half months of working on the Danish king, Peregrine got him to offer to try to persuade the Spanish king to retire from the Low Countries. Frederick also agreed to send
2,000 horse to back up the English force already in the Netherlands. On achieving this much, Peregrine set off for England by way of
Hamburg,
Emden and
Amsterdam.
In the
Netherlands, after the Battle of
Zutphen, in
1586, he was made General of the English forces in the
United Provinces. He made a name for himself in
Flanders in the period before the
Spanish Armada of
1588. Subsequently, he fought for the
Huguenots under
Henry of Navarre.
It was on Peregrine's estate at
Willoughby, Lincolnshire that the parents of
John Smith of Jamestown rented a farm which was the site of John's birth.
