Admiral Henry John Rous (23 January 1795 – 19 June 1877) was an officer of the British Royal Navy, who served during the Napoleonic Wars, and was later a Member of Parliament and a leading figure in horse racing.

[3] Aged just 13, Rous entered the Navy on 28 January 1808 as first-class volunteer on board the Royal William, under the command of Captain the Honourable Courtenay Boyle, and the flagship of Sir George Montagu, the Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth.

On the night of 31 August 1812 he was involved in the cutting out from the port of Lema, near Venice, of seven vessels loaded with ship timbers for the Venetian government, together with French xebec Tisiphone and two gunboats and, on 6 January 1813, the boats of Bacchante and the sloop Weazel successfully captured five enemy gun-vessels in the neighbourhood of Otranto.

The British boats approached and boarded under a heavy fire of grapeshot and musketry, while the Marines landed on shore, driving off 100 enemy troops and capturing two field guns.

Rous was put in command of one of the merchantmen, laden with oil, which broached and capsized in heavy weather around midnight, only kept afloat by the buoyancy of her cargo.

From January 1817, he served aboard Conqueror, the flagship of Rear-Admiral Robert Plampin at Saint Helena and, on 2 August, was appointed acting-commander of the 14-gun sloop Podargus.

[7] For many years, he managed the stables of the Duke of Bedford at Newmarket, and wrote On the Laws and Practice of Horse Racing that procured for him the title of the Blackstone of the Turf.