Thomas Fremantle, 3rd Baron Cottesloe

Thomas Francis Fremantle, 3rd Baron Cottesloe, 4th Baron Fremantle (, ; 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 () 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, 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.

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 . 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. He subsequently studied at Balliol College, Oxford, 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. He received his BA in 1885.

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. He was promoted to lieutenant on 25 November 1882, was a captain by the end of 1884. 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, 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. He became a lieutenant colonel by 1915, and was made an honorary colonel by 1919.

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. In this capacity, he was sent in the same year to make a report on the standards of safety at European shooting ranges. He also served as an associate member of the Board of Ordnance and as chairman of the War Office Small Arms Committee. 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. By this point, he had lost much of his former influence in the government and military.

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

Shooting career

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, and as its captain from 1920 until 1954. 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.

Fremantle also captained the victorious Great Britain team in the 1902 Palma Match, held at Rockliffe near Ottawa in Canada, and the Great Britain team which placed second in the match at Bisley the following year. 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.

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. Halford built a rifle range on his family estate at Wistow in Leicestershire, including an iron target and a ballistic pendulum hut. There, he, Fremantle and Metford carried out experiments into the trajectories of rounds fired from different weapons at up to , the results of which led to the adoption of breech-loading rifles by the British military in place of muzzle-loading weapons.

When Halford died in 1897, he left Wistow to Fremantle, and Fremantle continued the ballistic trials they had jointly carried out. Along with Metford, he developed a new form of ballistic pendulum, which he outlined to fellow shooters at the 1904 Imperial Meeting. 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. 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.'' 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.

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

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; he was also captain for the British victory in 1912. He frequently represented the House of Lords in the Vizianagram Match, contested against the House of Commons. He continued to shoot at Bisley until 1946, by which point he was 84 years old. Several trophies awarded for NRA competitions, including a cup in memory of Henry Halford, were donated by Fremantle. He also organised the first collection of small arms at Bisley, which became the NRA museum.

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Personal life and issue

Fremantle resided at Swanbourne House in Swanbourne in Buckinghamshire. He died there on 9 July 1956, and was succeeded by his second son, John Fremantle. He left an estate valued at £205,966 (), and bequeathed £1,000 () 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.

Fremantle married Florence Tapling, daughter of the industrialist Thomas Tapling, in 1896. They had four sons and four daughters. Their eldest son, Thomas Fremantle, was born in 1897 and followed his father to Eton, where he won an academic scholarship, represented the college in shooting in 1913 and 1914, and won academic prizes for poetry and chemistry. 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. Their third son died in childhood. One of Fremantle's daughters, Margaret, was a researcher into penicillin under Howard Florey, whose second wife she became in 1967.

Footnotes

Explanatory notes

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Works cited

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of the Austrian Empire

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cottesloe, Thomas Fremantle, 3rd Baron
1862 births
1956 deaths
3
British people of Dutch descent
Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry officers
Lord-lieutenants of Buckinghamshire
People from Aylesbury Vale
Deputy lieutenants of Buckinghamshire
British male sport shooters
Olympic shooters for Great Britain
Shooters at the 1908 Summer Olympics
Thomas
Schuyler family
Austrian barons
People of the National Rifle Association