24 Facts About John Mytton

John "Mad Jack" Mytton was a British eccentric and rake of the Regency period who was briefly a Tory Member of Parliament.

John Mytton's family were Shropshire squires with a lineage that stretched back some 500 years.

John Mytton was then sent to Harrow School, from which he was expelled after three terms.

John Mytton was then educated by a disparate series of private tutors whom he tormented with practical jokes that included leaving a horse in one tutor's bedroom.

John Mytton matriculated in January 1816 but, according to Alumni Cantabrigienses, it is doubtful that he took up his place, although there are claims that he took 2,000 bottles of port to sustain himself during his studies.

John Mytton certainly was not awarded a degree, having found university life boring, and embarked on a Grand Tour.

John Mytton rejoined the North Shropshire Yeomanry after his subsequent return to England and was promoted to major in 1822.

John Mytton had attempted in vain to lobby its colonel for an even higher rank in the place of an uncle, William Owen, who had left the regiment.

John Mytton later returned to his country seat and took up the duties of a squire in preparation for coming into his full inheritance when he became 21.

John Mytton spent just 30 minutes in the House of Commons in June 1819, but found the debates boring and difficult to follow because of his incipient deafness.

John Mytton withdrew on the fifth day of the poll and came bottom with 376 votes.

John Mytton then issued an address stating that he would contest the next parliamentary election, but by the time of that election, in 1832, he had gone into exile to escape his creditors.

John Mytton bought a horse named Euphrates, which was already a consistent winner, and entered it in the Gold Cup at Lichfield in 1825, and it duly won.

John Mytton became a well-known character at Oswestry Race Course, an increasingly disreputable local racetrack.

John Mytton held contests for local children at Dinas Mawddwy, giving sums ranging from half a crown to half a guinea to those who rolled all the way down the hill Moel Dinas.

John Mytton had hunted foxes with his own pack of hounds from the age of ten and went hunting in any kind of weather.

John Mytton's usual winter gear was a light jacket, thin shoes, linen trousers and silk stockings, but in the thrill of the chase he sometimes stripped off and continued the hunt naked, even through snow drifts and rivers in full spate.

John Mytton continued hunting despite being unseated and sustaining broken ribs -"unmurmuring when every jar was an agony", and sometimes led his stable boys on rat hunts, each stable boy being equipped with ice skates.

John Mytton had a wardrobe consisting of 150 pairs of hunting breeches, 700 pairs of handmade hunting boots, 1,000 hats and some 3,000 shirts.

John Mytton drove his gig at high speed and once decided to discover if a horse pulling a carriage could jump over a tollgate.

John Mytton accompanied him to France and stayed with him until his death.

In 1833, John Mytton returned to England, where, still unable to pay his debts, he was confined at Shrewsbury Prison, then transferred to the King's Bench Prison in Southwark.

In 1818, John Mytton married Harriet Emma Jones, a daughter of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt Jones, in London.

John Mytton ran away in 1830 and lived the rest of his life estranged.