The first known Rules of Golf date from 1744 and were formulated for the Annual Challenge for the Edinburgh Silver Club. These thirteen rules which form the oldest code read as follows:

Articles & Laws in Playing at Golf

1.You must Tee your Ball, within a Club's length of the Hole.
2.Your Tee must be upon the Ground.
3.You are not to change the Ball which you Strike off the Tee.
4.You are not to remove, Stones, Bones or any Break Club for the sake of playing your Ball, Except upon the fair Green/& that only/within a Club's length of your Ball.
5.If your Ball comes among Watter, or any Wattery Filth, you are at liberty to take out your Ball & bringing it behind the hazard and Teeing it, you may play it with any Club and allow your ambersant and a Stroke for so getting out your Ball.
6.If your Balls be found anywhere touching one another, You are to lift the first Ball, till you play the last.
7.At Holling, you are to play your Ball honestly for the Hole, and, not to play upon your Adversary's Ball, not lying in your way to the Hole.
8.If you shou'd lose your Ball, by its being taken up, or any other way, you are to go back to the Spot, where you struck last & drop another Ball, And allow your Adversary a Stroke for the misfortune.
9.No Man at Holling his Ball, is to be allowed, to mark his way to the Hole with his Club or, any thing else.
10.If a Ball be stopp'd by any person, Horse, Dog or any thing else, The Ball so stop'd must be play'd where it lyes.
11.If you draw your Club, in order to Strike & proceed so far in the Stroke, as to be bringing down your club; If then, your Club shall break, in, any way, it is to be Accounted a Stroke.
12.He, whose Ball lyes farthest from the Hole is obliged to play first.
13.Neither Trench, Ditch, or Dyke, made for the preservation of the Links, nor the Scholar's Holes or the Soldier's Lines, Shall be accounted a Hazard; But the Ball is to be taken out/Teed/and play'd with any Iron Club.

The last rule appears to be a local rule, but the other twelve all pertain to the general principles of how the game was played at that time.

Six other societies, apart from the Honourable Company, issued their own Rules of Golf between 1754 and 1786. They varied in size and content from 6 rules for Crail in 1786 and 22 rules for Aberdeen in 1783.

Information taken from The Rules of the Green - A History of the Rules of Golf by Kenneth G. Chapman (1997) and A Round of History at the British Golf Museum by Peter N. Lewis, Fiona C. Grieve and Elinor R. Clarke.