The Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh is a Scottish golf club, which is the oldest golfing society in the world, with references to it being instituted in 1735 dating from 1834.

The club enjoys a parkland course located in Barnton, Edinburgh that was designed initially by Tom Morris and Willie Park Jnr, with subsequent revisions by James Braid. Notable members have included Jack Nicklaus and Bernard Gallacher alongside a host of royals, aristocrats and socialites.

Although they became what one would now call an official “golf club” in 1895 with the purchase of a course of their own at Barton (as opposed to a golf society which one now understands to mean a club without a permanent course), they retain the name “golfing society”.

The society has had its current ‘Royal’ status since 1929 when King George V ordered the name be changed from The Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society to The Royal Burgess Golfing Society of Edinburgh.

According to the Internet