These familiar words have been solemnly pronounced by thousand upon thousand of husbands whose marriages were conducted according to The Book of Common Prayer (1662), and yet there seems to have been very little curiosity over the centuries about the notion of endowing wives with goods. Perhaps the officiating clergy are sometimes asked what it means, and it would be interesting to know whether there is a routine reply. The modern tendency is to replace it with words of sharing, a different concept which at least makes immediate sense. As a matter of law, however, it is puzzling that endowment with goods was regarded in 1662 as an appropriate standard formula to use in all English marriage ceremonies. Dower, as every student of land law used to know, was a widow's entitlement to an estate in land, to be held for life after her husband's death. It was protected by the writ of right of dower, which lay only for land of which the husband was seised in fee. If dower is defined as the interest protected by the writ of right of dower, it could not possibly extend to chattels real, such as leases of land for years, let alone to worldly goods of the movable variety. For our present purposes, however, this is to approach the matter from the wrong direction.