
Sir John Baptist de Medina
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The Duke of Hamilton was a great Tory magnate, shown here in the green sash of the Order of the Thistle, Scotland's highest Order of Chivalry. He was killed in a duel Hyde Park by Lord Mohun, which arose out of a long-running property dispute between the two peers who each laid claim to an inheritance. Horribly he was stabbed by the mortally-wounded Mohun with a broken sword as he bent over him. His tragic death was attributed by many to a political plot, since Mohun was a Whig and the Duke was a Tory, but in fact he had merely been unlucky enough to cross a man with an taste for violence and a disposition that would now be considered psychopathic. Mohun both provoked the duel and uniquely the challenge was issued by the offending party, a man who had already been acquitted by his peers for murdering an actor in Covent Garden.