A group of 12 Tickets and Passes awarded to Lord Cheylesmore who, as Herbert Eaton, was a pioneer collector of war medals and decorations in the 1860s and 1870s and later Chairman of the National Rifle Association:

HAMPSHIRE, Bisley, National Rifle Association, stained red ivory, standing archer and rifleman, rev. pass everywhere, named (Lord Cheylesmore), also signed by C.R. Crosse, Lt. Col., Sec. N.R.A., 42mm, 6.76g;
HAMPSHIRE, Bisley, National Rifle Association, Council, stained red ivory, back signed (C.R. Crosse, Lt. Col., Sec. N.R.A.), 43mm, 8.51g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Military Tournament, 1898, Patron’s Box, uniface stained bone, lion passant guardant, back painted 1898, 50 x 42mm, 7.44g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Military Tournament, 1899, Patron’s Box, uniface stained bone, monogram on cruciform arrangement, back with no.28 and painted 1899, 50mm, 11.16g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Military Tournament, 1900, Patron’s Box, uniface stained bone, Welsh plumes at centre of cross, back with no.10 and painted 1900, 65 x 62mm, 9.92g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Military Tournament, 1902, Patron’s Box, uniface stained bone, crowned E VII R monogram on shamrock-shaped cross, back with no.21 and painted 1902, 62mm, 12.70g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Military Tournament, 1903, Patron’s Box, uniface stained bone, central star surrounded by Garter, back with no.14, 40mm, 6.03g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Military Tournament, 1904, Patron’s Box, uniface stained lozenge-shaped bone, crowned monogram, back with no.15 and painted 1904, 62 x 45mm, 9.59g;
LONDON, Islington, Royal Naval & Military Tournament, 1905, Patron’s Box, uniface stained bone, sailing ship, back with no.11 and painted 1905, 53mm, 10.21g;
LONDON, Kensington Olympia, Royal Naval & Military Tournament, 1907, Reception Committee, star-shaped bone, back named (4, Major-General Lord Cheylesmore, C.V.O.), 38mm, 1.80g;
LONDON, Kensington Olympia, Royal Naval & Military Tournament, 1909, Reception Committee, lozenge-shaped bone, back named (21, Major-General Lord Cheylesmore, C.V.O.), 39 x 35mm, 5.03g;
LONDON, Kensington Olympia, Royal Naval & Military Tournament, 1910, Reception Committee, shield-shaped bone, back named (21, Major General Lord Cheylesmore, C.V.O.), 46 x 37mm, 4.42g [12].
First very fine, second fine and with chip to bottom, both pierced for suspension, others extremely fine and with original cords for wear £200-£400

Major-General Herbert Francis Eaton, 3rd Baron Cheylesmore, GBE, KCMG, KCVO (1848-1925), youngest son of Henry Eaton, 1st Baron (1816-91), who was head of the family firm, William Eaton & Sons, china silk brokers, and MP for Coventry 1865-87. Henry Eaton, a significant art collector who acquired a large tranche of paintings from the studio sale of Sir Edwin Landseer in 1874, owned that artist’s Monarch of the Glen, now in the National Galleries of Scotland; at the Christie’s sale of Henry Eaton’s paintings in 1892 it realised £7,245, which remained the highest price paid for a work by Landseer for over 70 years.

Herbert Eaton was educated at Eton, where he rowed in Warre’s House Four and shot for the Ashburton Shield in 1866. In 1868 he was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards, for whose 1st battalion he rowed in the 1877 Grand Challenge Cup at Henley. In 1884 he was given command of the National Rifle Association camp, then still at Wimbledon Common, and oversaw its move to Bisley, close to the Guards camp at Pirbright, in 1889-90. When his father inherited the baronetcy in 1887 he had to give up his parliamentary seat and Herbert, who stood for it in the ensuing by-election, failed to win it by a mere 16 votes. By 1891 he was in command of the Grenadier’s 2nd battalion which, according to an account in Vanity Fair, he had “just brought back from a well-deserved, if enforced, holiday in Bermuda” to which it had been sent following ‘an act of insubordination’. Herbert used his time in Bermuda well, meeting and later marrying an American heiress, Elizabeth Richardson French (1861-1945).

Appointed Major-General in 1899, Cheylesmore succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his surviving brother in July 1902, taking his seat in the House of Lords, for whom he shot against the House of Commons in their annual marksmanship competition. He became an alderman of Westminster City Council and served as Mayor of Westminster 1905-6, subsequently becoming chairman of London County Council in April 1912, the year after he and his wife had purchased Cooper’s Hill, Runnymede.

At the outbreak of the Great War Cheylesmore was appointed commandant of the School of Musketry at Bisley, which was to train over 14,000 officers, NCOs and civilians during the conflict. At the same time he presided over several courts-martial, most notably that of the German spy Carl Hans Lody, aka Charles Inglis, whose movements in Scotland and Ireland in the first two months of the War had attracted the attention of MI5. In his trial, at the end of October 1914, Lody did not attempt to deny that he was a German spy. His bearing in court was widely praised by the press and police, but nevertheless he was convicted and sentenced to death after a 3-day hearing. Four days later, on 6 November 1914, Lody was shot at dawn by a firing squad at the Tower of London in the first execution there for 167 years.

Cheylesmore was honoured with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire on 8 June 1925, but died a few weeks later, on 29 July 1925, at Englefield Green Hospital, Berkshire, as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash, being the first peer of the realm to suffer such a fate in Britain. He is buried in a mausoleum in Highgate Cemetery and commemorated by a monument by Sir Edwin Lutyens in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London. His phenomenally important collection of military and naval medals, which included no fewer than seven VCs and over 150 Naval General Service medals, which had been on public display in 23 display cases at the United Services Museum in Whitehall since Cheylesmore’s term as Mayor of Westminster, was sold over three days in July 1930. According to the cataloguer Douglas Glendining, the collection was largely formed prior to 1880, when the well-known private catalogue of it was produced. Cheylesmore certainly availed himself of the opportunity of acquiring pieces from the collections of his contemporaries, including Colonel Murray, Lawson Whalley and Edward Hyde Greg, dispersed in the 1870s and early 1880s; doubtless many others were, as Mr Glendining wrote, bought by Cheylesmore to save them from an untimely end in the melting pot.

Lt-Col Charles Robert Crosse, CMG, MVO (1851-1921), Royal West Kent Regt, secretary of the National Rifle Association 1898-1920.

Please note ivory is covered by CITES legislation and may be subject to import/export and trade restrictions