ABSTRACT
The organisation of a horse race requires a set of rules to demonstrate fairness to all competitors and to prevent anarchy on the course. There was no central governing body in horseracing in the eighteenth century and so the organisers of each meeting devised their own set of articles, which were a legally binding code of conduct between the owners of the horses entered and the givers of any prizes. Although the articles were partly determined by local conditions and opinions, they usually followed a similar pattern in showing the basic details of place and date, financial arrangements, officials, weights to be carried, types of horses allowed, distance, number of heats, route to be run and dispute resolution. The articles shown below, which were for a race at Malton in 1713, are typical.
