Jobti /R>ytton 109 



in the following brief sketch of his career a.s an 

 enthusiastic, though certainly hare-brained votary of 

 the Chase. 



John Mytton was born on the 30th of September 

 1796, at the family seat of Halston, in Shropshire, three 

 miles from Oswestry, and was left fatherless at two 

 years of age. His mother spoiled him, and by the 

 time he was ten years of age, the young heir was what 

 is called a ' regular pickle.' He was expelled from West- 

 minster and Harrow in succession. At the former 

 school he spent ;^8oo a year, exactly double his allow- 

 ance, and wrote when he was only fourteen years of 

 age to Lord Eldon, the then Lord Chancellor, requesting 

 an increase of income, as he was going to be married. 

 The Lord Chancellor replied, ' Sir, if you cannot live on 

 your income, you may starve, and if you marry I will 

 commit you to prison.' At the age of nineteen he 

 entered, as a cornet, the 7th Hussars, and joined that 

 regiment in France with the army of occupation. But 

 as there was no more fighting. Cornet Mytton was at 

 leisure to enter into all kinds of youthful mischief. 



One of his feats was borrowing ^3000 of a banker 

 at St Omer one day, and losing it at an E.O. table in 

 Calais the next. He also lost 16,000 napoleons to a 

 certain captain at billiards, which sum he was unable 

 to pay at the moment. But this score was wiped off in 

 a more agreeable manner. The whole thing was 

 suspected of being a cross, which it no doubt was, 

 consequently the colonel of Mytton's regiment, the then 

 Earl of Uxbridge, forbade his paying the money ; and 

 the captain in question was afterwards implicated in a 

 transaction which went far to prove that Lord Uxbridge 

 was morally right. When Mytton came of age he found 



