Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey KG (16 December 1582 – 24 October 1642), previously (from 1601 to 1626) 14th Baron Willoughby de Eresby was an English peer, soldier and courtier.

[4] The long Continental wars throughout the peaceful reign of King James I had been treated by the English nobility as schools of arms, as a few campaigns were considered a graceful finish to a gentleman's education.

[10] As Lord Lindsey was a most experienced soldier of 59 years of age at the start of the English Civil War, King Charles I had appointed him General-in-chief of the Royalists for the Battle of Edgehill.

Anthony van Dyck has left portraits of the father and the son; the one a bald-headed, alert, precise-looking old warrior, with the cuirass and gauntlets of earlier warfare; the other, the very model of a cavalier, tall, easy, and graceful, with a gentle reflective face, and wearing the long lovelocks and deep-point lace collar and cuffs characteristic of Queen Henrietta's Court.

At eight o'clock, on the morning of 23 October 1642 King Charles was riding along the ridge of Edge Hill, and looking down into the Vale of the Red Horse, a fair meadow land, here and there broken by hedges and copses.

Lord Lindsey, who was an old comrade of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, who was by then the commander of the Parliamentarian forces, knew that he would follow the tactics they had both together studied in Holland, little thinking that one day they should be arrayed one against the other in their own native England.

He gravely resigned the empty title of General, which only made confusion worse confounded, and rode away to act as colonel of his own Lincolnshire regiment, pitying his master's perplexity, and resolved that no private pique should hinder him from doing his duty.

However, the main body of the army stood firm, and for some time the battle was nearly equal, until a large troop of Parliamentary cavalry who had been kept in reserve, wheeled round and fell upon the Royal forces just when their scanty supply of ammunition was exhausted.

He was instantly surrounded by Roundhead cavalry; but his son, Lord Willoughby, seeing his danger, flung himself alone among them, forced his way forward, and raised his father in his arm, unheeding his own safety.

Lindsey was still full of spirit, and spoke to them so strongly of their broken faith, and of the sin of disloyalty and rebellion, that they slunk away one by one out of the hut, and dissuaded Essex from coming himself to see his old friend, as he had intended.

The surgeon, however, arrived, but too late, Lindsey was already so much exhausted by cold and loss of blood, that he died early in the morning of 24 October 1642, as he was being carried through the gates of Warwick Castle where other Royalist prisoners were being kept.

They had thirteen children: The office of Lord Great Chamberlain descended through to him following the death of his cousin Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford, as being the closest heir male.