John Mytton

John Mytton (30 September 1796 – 29 March 1834) was a notable British eccentric and rake of the Regency period.

John "Mad Jack" Mytton was born into a family of Shropshire squires with a lineage that stretched back some 500 years before his day. (The surname may have originated as "Mutton" or be associated with the village of Mytton, near Forton Heath, a few miles west of Shrewsbury.) His father, also named John, died at the age of 30, when Jack was only two years old, and he inherited the family seat, Halston Hall, Whittington, (near Oswestry in Shropshire), which was worth £60,000 (£4.3 million as of 2006), as well as an annual income of £10,000 (more than £716,000 as of 2006) from rental and agricultural assets generated by an estate of more than 132,000 acres in North Wales and Shropshire.

Jack was sent to Westminster School, but was expelled after one year for fighting a master at the school. He was then sent to Harrow School, from where he was also expelled after three terms. He 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.

Despite having achieved very little academically, Jack was granted entry to the University of Cambridge, to which he took 2,000 bottles of port to sustain himself during his studies. He left without a degree, having found university life boring, and embarked on the Grand Tour.

Mytton saw both part-time and full-time military service. In 1812, when he was 16, he was commissioned as captain in a local yeomanry regiment, the Oswestry Rangers. In 1814 it was merged into the North Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry, into which Mytton transferred.

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