He was of a Cavalier family, the fourth son to Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey, Lord Great Chamberlain to Charles I, and his first wife Martha, daughter of Sir William Cockayn of Rushton, Northamptonshire, and widow of John Ramsay, 1st Earl of Holderness.
Before 1665 he had obtained the degree of serjeant-at-law; that year, with his brother Charles, he was made an honorary M.A.
[1] On the fall of the First Danby ministry, King Charles II formed a new council of thirty (the Privy Council Ministry, with Lord Shaftesbury as Lord President, Bertie was discharged from his office of judge on 29 April 1679.
[1] This move came at the height of the Popish Plot allegations, and Bertie, along with those judges, had four days previously been among those who tried Nathaniel Reading in the court of king's bench at Westminster.
[1] Bertie died unmarried 23 February 1681, and was buried in the Temple Church.