page_title: John Mytton
section_title: Life as a squire
hierarchical_section_title: John Mytton / Life as a squire
caption_attribution_description: English: John Mytton, artist unknown, c. 1820-1830, oil on canvas - Shrewsbury Museums Service.
context_page_description: John "Mad Jack" Mytton was a British eccentric and rake of the Regency period who was briefly a Tory Member of Parliament.
context_section_description: 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. 
  In 1819 he entertained ambitions of standing for Parliament, as a Tory, following family tradition. He secured his seat by offering voters £10 notes, spending a total of £10,000 (more than £750,000 as of 2006)). He thus became MP for Shrewsbury. He 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.  When Parliament was dissolved in 1820 he declined to stand at the next election. He instead served as High Sheriff of Merionethshire for 1821–22, High Sheriff of Shropshire for 1823–24, and Mayor of Oswestry for 1824–25. He served as treasurer of the Salop Infirmary at Shrewsbury in 1822.
  However, he attempted to enter Parliament again in 1831, this time for one of the two Shropshire seats and as a Whig candidate.  He withdrew on the fifth day of the poll and came bottom with 376 votes.  He 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.
  Meanwhile, he indulged his enjoyment of horseracing and gambling, and enjoyed some success at both. He 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. Its portrait, commissioned by Mytton from the painter William Webb, was exhibited at the Royal Academy the same year. Mytton also became a well-known character at Oswestry Race Course, an increasingly disreputable local racetrack.
  It is said that in 1826, in order to win a bet, he rode a horse into the Bedford Hotel opposite the Town Hall in Leamington Spa, up the grand staircase and onto the balcony, from which he jumped, still seated on his horse, over the diners in the restaurant below, and out through the window onto the Parade.
  He also 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.
caption: John Mytton, c. 1820 – 1830
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