Thomas Fremantle, 3rd Baron Cottesloe

Template:Short description Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Thomas Francis Fremantle, 3rd Baron Cottesloe, 4th Baron Fremantle Template:Postnominals (Template:IPAc-en, Template:Respell;Template:Sfn 5 February 1862 – 9 July 1956) was a British peer and rifle shooter. Regarded among the foremost marksmen of his day, he competed for Great Britain in the 1908 Summer Olympics, and captained Great Britain in several international matches. He was also a long-time member of the English Eight Club, shooting, coaching and captaining England in the Elcho match for a total of more than sixty years.

The eldest son of Thomas Fremantle, 2nd Baron Cottesloe, Fremantle was educated at Eton College, where he showed an early aptitude for shooting, and at Balliol College, Oxford. He first made the final of the Queen's Prize, the most prestigious competition in British rifle shooting, while still an undergraduate. In 1885, the year after he left Oxford, he first represented England in the Elcho, and he went on to captain Great Britain in the International Rifle Match, the Empire Match and the Palma Match. He was also prominent in the administration of British shooting, becoming assistant secretary to the British National Rifle Association (NRA) in 1889 and helping to oversee the NRA's move to Bisley Camp in Surrey. He served as the NRA's chairman between 1931 and 1939.

Fremantle became an officer in the Volunteer Force in 1881. He served as a volunteer aide-de-camp to Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, and between 1900 and 1903 as an Assistant Private Secretary to his cousin St John Brodrick, the Secretary of State for War. He conducted research into ballistics alongside his mentor Henry St John Halford and the engineers William Ellis Metford and Arthur Mallock, and was regarded as an authority on the history and design of rifles, on which he published several books. He was made an associate member of the Board of Ordnance and chairman of the War Office Small Arms Committee. During the First World War, he was head of the Territorial Association, which represented the army's reserve battalions.

Fremantle's eldest son, Thomas, was killed in the First World War; upon his death in 1956, Fremantle's title passed to his second son, John. Among his four daughters was Margaret Jennings, a researcher into penicillin under Howard Florey. He donated several of the NRA's trophies and left the association £1,000 (Template:Inflation) for the promotion of shooting competitions to support the development of long-range rifles.

Early life and education

Thomas Francis Fremantle was born on 5 February 1862. He was the eldest son of Thomas Fremantle, 2nd Baron Cottesloe,Template:Sfn and a descendant of Admiral Thomas Fremantle, who was awarded the Austrian title of Baron Fremantle. Charles William Fremantle, who became deputy master of the Royal Mint, was his paternal uncle.Template:Sfn

Fremantle was educated at Eton College, a public school in Berkshire. There, he took up rifle shooting: in 1879, firing a Snider–Enfield rifle, he attended the Imperial Meeting, the premier competition in fullbore shooting, and won the Wills Prize with a perfect score of ten bullseyes at Template:Convert.Template:Sfn In the same year, he represented Eton in the Ashburton Shield; he did so again in 1880, in which year his team won the competition.Template:Sfn He subsequently studied at Balliol College, Oxford,Template:Sfn where he shot against Cambridge University in both the long-range Humphry Cup and the short-range Chancellors' Plate in all four of his years of study: Oxford won seven out of these eight matches. In 1884, his final year at the university, he made the final of the Queen's Prize, the most prestigious competition at the Imperial Meeting.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn He received his BA in 1885.Template:Sfn

Public life

Fremantle became an officer in the Volunteer Force in 1881, later moving to the Territorial Army when the Volunteers were amalgamated into it in 1908; he was awarded both the Volunteer Officers' Decoration (in 1901) and the Territorial Decoration.Template:Refn He was promoted to lieutenant on 25 November 1882,Template:Refn was a captain by the end of 1884.Template:Refn In 1889, he qualified as a military marksmanship instructor, and by 1892 was acting as the shooting instructor to his unit, the 1st Buckinghamshire Rifle Volunteer Corps,Template:Sfn itself under the command of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry. By 1899, he was a volunteer aide-de-camp to Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces.Template:Refn He became a lieutenant colonel by 1915,Template:Sfn and was made an honorary colonel by 1919.Template:Sfn

Fremantle became in 1900 an unpaid Assistant Private Secretary to his cousin St John Brodrick, the Secretary of State for War, and remained in post until 1903.Template:Refn In this capacity, he was sent in the same year to make a report on the standards of safety at European shooting ranges.Template:Sfnm He also served as an associate member of the Board of Ordnance and as chairman of the War Office Small Arms Committee.Template:Sfn During the First World War, as head of the Territorial Association representing the army's reserve battalions, he unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the assignment of recruits from Buckinghamshire to regiments of other counties and the disbandment of Buckinghamshire battalions.Template:Sfnm By this point, he had lost much of his former influence in the government and military.Template:Sfn

By the early 1890s, Fremantle was a county councillor for Buckinghamshire.Template:Sfn In 1911, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant of the county. He became the third Baron Cottesloe on his father's death in 1918.Template:Sfn From 1923 to 1954, he was lord-lieutenant of Buckinghamshire; he also served as president of the County Councils Association.Template:Sfn He also served as a justice of the peace and as a county alderman.Template:Sfn

Shooting career

Firers in the prone position and coaches, seated on chairs with telescopes, on a grass firing point: the Stickledown clock tower is just visible in the distance.

The British team at Template:Convert in the free rifle event at the 1908 Olympics, held at Bisley

Fremantle made the Queen's Final again in 1893 and in 1921. He first competed in the English Eight, the match rifle team representing England in the international competition for the Elcho Shield, in 1885. He went on to be part of the team for over sixty years, acting as a firer for 27 years, as its wind coach,Template:Sfn and as its captain from 1920 until 1954.Template:Sfn In June 1899, he captained a Great Britain team in the International Rifle Match, held at The Hague in Holland. Great Britain placed seventh out of eight teams: their poor performance was blamed on difficult range conditions, their choice of the Lee–Metford service rifle, and their decision to focus on shooting from the standing position.Template:Refn

Fremantle also captained the victorious Great Britain team in the 1902 Palma Match, held at Rockliffe near Ottawa in Canada,Template:Refn and the Great Britain team which placed second in the match at Bisley the following year.Template:Sfn He was also captain of the British team, which included Arthur Fulton and P. W. Richardson, for the 1908 International Match, held at Bisley. Great Britain placed second, 34 points behind the United States and 59 points ahead of Canada: Fremantle credited the American victory to their use of novel aperture rearsights, while the American captain described the British team as the strongest he had competed against.Template:Sfn

From 1887, Fremantle began to conduct research into ballistics, together with the engineer William Ellis Metford and Henry St John Halford, another aristocratic rifleman who became his mentor.Template:Sfnm Halford built a Template:Convert rifle range on his family estate at Wistow in Leicestershire, including an iron target and a ballistic pendulum hut.Template:Sfn There, he, Fremantle and Metford carried out experiments into the trajectories of rounds fired from different weapons at up to Template:Convert, the results of which led to the adoption of breech-loading rifles by the British military in place of muzzle-loading weapons.Template:Sfn

When Halford died in 1897, he left Wistow to Fremantle, and Fremantle continued the ballistic trials they had jointly carried out.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Along with Metford, he developed a new form of ballistic pendulum, which he outlined to fellow shooters at the 1904 Imperial Meeting.Template:Sfn In 1909 and 1911, working with the engineer Arthur Mallock, Fremantle devised a method to establish the maximum range of the Short Magazine Lee–Enfield when firing Mark VII ammunition.Template:Sfn He wrote several articles on the history and design of rifles for Baily's Magazine, which he collated into his 1896 book Notes on the Rifle.Template:Sfn He also served as president of the Society for Army Historical Research and contributed to several editions of the Text Book of Small Arms, published by the War Office.Template:Sfn

Fremantle became assistant secretary to the British National Rifle Association (NRA) in 1889,Template:Sfn reporting to Alfred Paget Humphry, the association's secretary.Template:Sfn He played an important role in the association's move from Wimbledon Common to Bisley Camp, first used for the 1890 Imperial Meeting,Template:Sfn which was overseen by Humphry.Template:Sfn Fremantle was elected to the NRA's governing council in 1891.Template:Sfn He was appointed by the association to the committee organising the programme for the shooting events at the 1908 Summer Olympics, which were held at Bisley.Template:Sfn He shot there in the 1000-yard free rifle event, placing joint sixteenth with a score of 87 out of 100.Template:Sfn Having previously served as vice-chairman of the NRA, he was its chairman between 1931 and 1939.Template:Sfn

In the 1910 Empire Match, for which Fremantle served as captain and coach, Great Britain won by 72 points with a score of 2,177;Template:Sfn he was also captain for the British victory in 1912.Template:Sfn He frequently represented the House of Lords in the Vizianagram Match, contested against the House of Commons.Template:Sfn He continued to shoot at Bisley until 1946, by which point he was 84 years old.Template:Sfn Several trophies awarded for NRA competitions, including a cup in memory of Henry Halford, were donated by Fremantle.Template:Sfn He also organised the first collection of small arms at Bisley, which became the NRA museum.Template:Sfn

Personal life and issue

Fremantle resided at Swanbourne House in Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire.Template:Sfn He died there on 9 July 1956,Template:Refn and was succeeded by his second son, John Fremantle.Template:Sfn He left an estate valued at £205,966 (Template:Inflation), and bequeathed £1,000 (Template:Inflation) to the British National Rifle Association, to be invested and the proceeds used to fund competitions which would support the development of better long-range rifles.Template:Sfn

Fremantle married Florence Tapling,Template:Sfn daughter of the industrialist Thomas Tapling,Template:Sfn in 1896.Template:Sfn They had four sons and four daughters.Template:Sfn Their eldest son, Thomas Fremantle,Template:Sfn was born in 1897 and followed his father to Eton,Template:Sfn where he won an academic scholarship,Template:Sfn represented the college in shooting in 1913 and 1914,Template:Sfn and won academic prizes for poetry and chemistry.Template:Sfn The younger Thomas left Eton early, at the age of seventeen, to take a commission in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in September 1914; he died, on 17 October 1915, of wounds sustained on 25 September during an attack in support of the Battle of Loos.Template:Sfn Their third son died in childhood.Template:Sfn One of Fremantle's daughters, Margaret, was a researcher into penicillin under Howard Florey, whose second wife she became in 1967.Template:Sfnm

Works cited

• Template:Sfn whitelist
• Template:Cite magazine

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