Of all the Duttons (and in this part of the world the name is familiar and notable) this was the founding family. They came in, of course, with the Conqueror. There was a Dutton in the Crusades (he was the ancestor of the Warburtons of Warburton and Arley); at the Battle of Poictiers; at the side of Henry Percy called Hotspur; in the border wars against the Welsh prince Owen Glendower; with the Cheshire archers at Agincourt; and there were Duttons on both sides in the Wars of the Roses, slaughtering each other without mercy.

The family settled in Dutton and at Hatton, near Chester, and branched to Chester, Holt in Denbighshire, Cloughton in Yorkshire and Sherborne in Gloucestershire. Fulk Dutton was Mayor of Chester in 1537 and 1548 and Richard Dutton in 1567 and 1573. It is on record that this Richard " kept house at the White Friars, and in all the twelve days of Christmas kept open house for meat and drink at meal-time for any that came and all the Christmas-time there was a Lord of Misrule ".

Sir Piers Dutton built or rebuilt Dutton Hall and was Sheriff of Cheshire and one of Henry the Eighth’s commissioners for the dissolution of the monasteries. Sir Richard Dutton was Governor of Barbados, 1680-1685, Sir Thomas Dutton served as a soldier in the Low Countries and survived a bloody and barbaric duel with a superior officer on Calais Sands.