The University of St Andrews preserves the “Golfer’s Charter,” the proclamation of 25 January 1552 by Archbishop Hamilton which reserves to the Provost, Town Council and townspeople the right of “playing at golf, futball, schuting at all gamis, with all uther manner of pastyme, as ever thai pleis.” It also allowed them to gather turf (peat) for fuel and to pasture livestock.
The charter has its own history. James K. Robertson wrote in St. Andrews: Home of Golf, published in 1967: “The document was lost for over 100 years but is again in the possession of the Town Council of St. Andrews only by sheer chance. An Edinburgh printer rescued it from the pulp mill in the last century by paying one shilling for it. He sold it to the University of St Andrews for 45 shillings. In 1922 the University presented the parchment to its rightful owners.” Tom Jarrett’s St. Andrews Golf Links: The First 600 Years asserts it being found in a desk at the Town Hall in 1994, and since then has returned to the University Library’s Special Collections Division. It’s something to see it with your own eyes, as I have on two occasions.
