Before leaving the statutes it is perhaps worth while to notice the proviso that exists in so many of them in favour of John Dutton. The lord of Dutton claimed jurisdiction over the minstrels of Cheshire. In the reign of John, the Earl of Chester was imprisoned by the Welsh in Rhuddlan Castle. He sent for aid to Roger de Lacy then the Constable of Cheshire. It was the time of Chester fair. De Lacy collected a multitude of the shoemakers, fiddlers and loiterers who were in the town and with this force released the Earl. For this he obtained a grant for himself and his heirs of jurisdiction over minstrels and over disorderly characters in Cheshire. In 1216 this privilege was granted by John de Lacy to Hugh Dutton and remained in the hands of the lords of Dutton through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was the custom for the lord of Dutton to hold a Court at Chester on Midsummer day and in 1498 he received from the whole body of minstrels four flagons of wine and a lance with fourpence halfpenny from each of them. A Court of this kind was held as late as 1756[309]. In nearly all the statutes concerning vagabonds until that of 1822, the rights of John Dutton's heirs were preserved, so that in the seventeenth century the minstrels of Cheshire, licensed by the lord of Dutton, might wander without fear of the penalty inflicted on wanderers elsewhere,--a curious but direct consequence of an incident of border warfare in the early part of the thirteenth century. Few facts illustrate better both the continuity of English history and the toleration of anomalies by English law than this perpetuation of the quaint jurisdiction of the house of Dutton for more than six centuries. [309] Lysons' _Cheshire_, p. 523 seq.