John "Mad Jack" Mytton (30 September 1796 – 29 March 1834) was a British eccentric and rake of the Regency period who was briefly a Tory Member of Parliament.

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

As a cornet, he spent a year with the regiment in France as part of the army of occupation after the defeat of Napoleon I, spending his time gambling and drinking before resigning his commission.

He 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.

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.

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.

His 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.

His favourite horse, Baronet, had free range inside Halston Hall and lay in front of the fire with Mytton.

Mytton drove his gig at high speed and once decided to discover if a horse pulling a carriage could jump over a tollgate (it could not).

said Mytton as he stood undressed on the floor, apparently in the act of getting into bed 'but I’ll frighten it away'; so seizing a lighted candle applied it to the tail of his shirt – it being a cotton one – he was instantly enveloped in flames.

[15] He died there in 1834, a "round-shouldered, tottering, old-young man bloated by drink, worn out by too much foolishness, too much wretchedness and too much brandy".

[1] In 2023, a Time Team investigation sent a camera down into the vault, which discovered his intact coffin had what appeared to be the skin of his beloved pet bear draped over it.

Astley House Pradoe, guardian of J. F. G. Mytton, this engraving of his ward's late father" When the print was published John jnr would have been 24 years old and would have inherited what was left of the estate.

Before her death in Cliffden, Somerset, on 2 July 1820, they were the parents of:[16] His second marriage was to Caroline Mallet Giffard from Chillington Hall in October 1821 at Brewood, Staffordshire.

Before their estrangement, they were the parents of a daughter and four sons:[16] Euphrates and Charles both died within months after their father and were also buried at Halston, as was Caroline upon her death in 1841.