Bertram died unmarried at an early age in 1856. By his will he left his estates to Lord Edmund Howard (by Royal Licence from 1876-1922: Talbot), son of the Duke of Norfolk, a will contested by three distant relatives and after a long and expensive legal case the House of Lords ruled in 1860 in favour of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 3rd Earl Talbot, who thus became the eighteenth Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford. He was a descendant of the aforementioned the Hon. Sir Gilbert Talbot (died 1518), third son of the second Earl of Shrewsbury (see the Earl Talbot for earlier history of this branch). He also held the titles of Baron Talbot, of Hensol in the County of Glamorgan, and Viscount of Ingestre, of Ingestre Hall in the County of Stafford. Lord Shrewsbury was an admiral in the Royal Navy and also served in the second Conservative administration of the Earl of Derby as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (chief whip in the House of Lords) from 1858 to 1859.