and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages_ (London, 1862); Thrupp, _The Anglo-Saxon Home_ (London, 1862); Esmein's edition of Gide, _Étude sur la condition privée de la femme_ (Paris, 1885); Lingard, _History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church_ (London, 1845; 2d ed., London, n. d.); Phillips, _Geschichte des angelsächsischen Rechts_ (Göttingen, 1825); _idem_, _Reichs- und Rechtsgeschichte seit der Ankunft der Normannen_ (Berlin, 1827-28); Hodgetts, _Older England_ (London, 1884); Jeaffreson, _Brides and Bridals_ (London, 1872); and Glasson, "La famille," in his _Histoire du droit et des institutions de l'Angleterre_, I. For further illustration of matrimonial law and custom read Dezert, _Les unions irrégulières en Navarre_ (Caen, 1892); and Hanauer, "Coutumes matrimoniales au moyen age," in _Mémoires de l'académie de Stanislas_ (Nancy, 1892).] I. THE PRIMITIVE REAL CONTRACT OF SALE AND ITS MODIFICATIONS It is not improbable, as already explained, that wife-capture may have existed among our ancestors,[837] though some of the evidence for its survival collected from the folk-laws by Dargun and others may perhaps more rationally be regarded merely as proof of the brutality and lawlessness incident to the transitional period of the "barbarian invasion."[838] The testimony of the law-books, however, points more clearly to the former existence of wife-purchase. With the Old English, as well as among the other Teutonic peoples, at the dawn of history marriage was a private transaction, taking the form of a sale of the bride by the father or other legal guardian to the bridegroom. The procedure consisted of two parts. First was the _beweddung_, or betrothal; and second, the _gifta_, or actual tradition of the bride at the nuptials.[839] The _beweddung_ was a "real contract of sale,"[840] essential to which was one-sided performance; that is, payment by the bridegroom of the _weotuma_ or _Witthum_, the price of the bride.[841] In ancient times the person of the woman was doubtless the object of purchase; and within the historical period woman, among most Teutonic peoples, remained in perpetual tutelage.[842] When the guardianship of the father or other male relative, as representative of the clan-group or _Sippe_, ended, that of the husband began. But, however hard may have been the lot of the married woman, manifestly her condition was very different from that of a chattel. This fact is not wholly inconsistent with wife-purchase; for, as already seen, a certain liberty, even of choice, may be enjoyed by the woman where she is legally the object of sale. It has given rise to a theory of the betrothal which it is thought the records sustain. The _weotuma_, it is contended, must be looked upon as the price of the _mund_, or protectorship over the woman, which is transferred from the father or legal guardian to the husband. This is the view now perhaps most