[1] Prior to the unification of England in the tenth century, various forms of adultery were punishable in laws codified by Anglo-Saxon kings.
[2][3]: 202–208 These laws defined adultery in terms of damage to men's property, since women were to be under the control of male relatives or, after marriage, their husbands.
[3]: 206 The ninth-century Laws of Alfred of Wessex include similar provisions, including an explicit statement that it was legal for one man to attack another "if he finds another with his wedded wife, behind closed doors or under the same blanket; or [if he finds another man] with his legitimate daughter (or with his legitimate married sister); or with his mother, if she has been legally married to his father".
[3]: 208 Following the unification of England around the early tenth century, English kings promulgated further law-codes that began to conceptualise adultery in terms of Christian sin.
[3]: 209–10 During the twelfth century, as English common law emerged, the punishment of adultery was shifted from the secular authorities to the ecclesiastical ones.
Ecclesiastical punishments for adultery prior to 1857 involved forms of penance, sometimes public, such as appearing before the parish congregation in a penitential white sheet.
[8][5]: 206–209 [3]: 218–19 Another avenue for prosecuting an adulterer for loss of consortium was to accuse them of 'enticement' (wooing a spouse such that she desired to leave her husband).
The Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 made adultery a ground of divorce for either spouse (previously, only the man had been able to do this; women had to prove additional fault).