 Wife selling in its " ritual form " appears to be an " invented custom " that originated at about the end of the 17th century , although there is an account from 1302 of someone who " granted his wife by deed to another man " . With the rise in popularity of newspapers , reports of the practice become more frequent in the second half of the 18th century . In the words of 20th @-@ century writer Courtney Kenny , the ritual was " a custom rooted sufficiently deeply to show that it was of no recent origin " . Writing in 1901 on the subject of wife selling , James Bryce stated that there was " no trace at all in our [ English ] law of any such right " , but he also observed that " everybody has heard of the odd habit of selling a wife , which still occasionally recurs among the humbler classes in England " . 
