John Mytton - Drinking

Drinking

Mytton was also a drinking man and could drink eight bottles of port wine a day with a helping of brandy. He managed to kill one of his horses, Sportsman, by making it drink a bottle of port.

Rather than sit down to a formal dinner every evening he would sustain himself throughout the day with 'pounds of filberts' when in season, a type of hazelnut, or dine with his tenant farmers eating full fat bacon and quaffing a quart of ale beside their fire before returning to Halston Hall, where his cook and servants would have prepared a full dinner which he would now be unable to eat.

Mytton was an enthusiastic dog-fighter and gambled on the outcome of fights between bulldogs, mastiffs and terriers. He also apparently beat his own fearless bulldog with his bare fists, a dog whose favourite method of quelling his opponents was to put a vice-like bite on their snouts. He is also said to have bitten fighting dogs with his own teeth, even standing upright with a mastiff held in his own jaws without using his hands to support the weight. He was also rumored to have put his wife’s lapdog on the fire in a jealous rage, burning it to death. Though witnesses claim what actually happened was he threw the dog high in the air, caught him and his butler yelled 'sir you will kill him'. Many rumours were started about Mytton many of which were unfounded.