Thank goodness we've moved on from there! Perhaps that sort of thing was where the tradition of the bride's father "giving her away" to her new husband came from?
Well, let's not be too hasty over this. Let's contextualise it.
In an era where (a) women could not, as a whole, expect to be able to earn a living for themselves ... they had to rely upon having a husband to provide for them; and (b) divorce was unobtainable except by those who could afford to obtain a private act of parliament; what WERE a married couple to do when they could no longer stand to live with one another.
I cannot comment on the auctions; but I suspect that many sales by private treaty were actually entirely amicable on all sides; the husband keen to be rid of a wife he had fallen out with; the wife willing to swap her vendor husband for the purchaser (with whom, I suspect, in many cases she had already committed adultery); and the purchaser willing to take on the vendor's wife.
I think the sale - and the changing hands of money - was necessary to show that the husband had willingly parted with his wife, so that he could not subsequently pursue any of the legal remedies that were available to a man whose wife had run off with another man in the days when wives were regarded as their husband's property (and he will, I am sure, have been only too aware that he had signed a receipt which furnished plentiful evidence to the effect that he was a willing party in all of this).
And why wait twelve years to marry?
Well, obviously, it would be bigamy to re-marry while you had a former spouse still living. So they had to wait until the original husband had died and the wife was free to re-marry.
