John Mytton - Military Service

Military Service

Mytton saw both part-time and full-time military service. In 1812, aged sixteen, he was commissioned as captain in a local yeomanry regiment called the Oswestry Rangers. In 1814 they amalgamated into a larger regiment, the North Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry, into which he transferred

Upon his return from his Grand Tour he was commissioned into the regular army, and therefore joined the 7th Hussars, whose uniform was particularly elaborate and ornate even by the standards of the time. As a young officer, a Cornet, he spent a year with the regiment in France as part of the occupation army after Napoleon's defeat; a period in which he spent his time gambling and drinking before resigning his commission. He later returned to his country seat in Britain and took on the duties and obligations of a country squire, which was meant to prepare him before he received his full inheritance upon becoming 21 years old.

Also after his return he rejoined the North Shropshire Yeomanry at his previous rank, before being promoted major in 1822, after a vain attempt to lobby its colonel for an even higher rank in the place of an uncle, William Owen, who had left the regiment. Despite his later periods abroad and imprisonment, he was still on regimental strength at the time of his death twelve years later.

Upon receiving his full inheritance he set about spending it at an unsustainable rate.