Wedding contracts in the times of the Tudors were peculiar, not being regarded as binding unless there had been an exchange of gold or the drinking of wine. In the old play of _The Widow_, Ricardo artfully entices the widow into a verbal contract, whereupon one of her suitors draws hope for himself through the possibility of the engagement being invalid because it lacked the observance of this custom. He says: "Stay, stay--you broke no Gold between you?" To which she answers: "We broke nothing, Sir;" and on his adding: "Nor drank to each other?" she replies: "Not a drop, Sir." Whence he draws this conclusion: "That the contract cannot stand good in Law." The custom of throwing rice after a wedded couple is a continuance of the practice in the sixteenth century of throwing wheat upon the head of the bride as she came from the church. Marriage was not considered irrevocable, because, aside from the regular forms of divorce, it was not unusual for a husband to sell his wife for a satisfactory consideration. Even down to recent times, the people in some of the rural districts of England could not understand why a husband had not a right so to dispose of his wife, provided he delivered her over with a halter around her neck. Henry Machyn notes in his _Diary_, in 1553, the following: "Dyd ryd in a cart Checken, parson of Sant Necolas Coldabbay, round abowt London, _for he sold ys wyff_ to a bowcher." When the contracting parties were too poor to pay for the ceremony and the wedding feast, and the expenses of the occasion were met by the guests clubbing together, the occasion was termed a "penny wedding."