Sport: Consent Decree

A ticket to the royal enclosure at Ascot costs only £10 (£7 for women), but for two centuries British horse-lovers have had more trouble getting in than a fishmonger’s daughter trying to marry the Prince of Wales. A man needed more than the cash and the proper clothes; his social background had to shine pure and proud under the fierce scrutiny of the Duke of Norfolk and his committee of twelve inquisitors. Ever since Ascot was founded by Queen Anne in 1711, court rules have governed admission to the royal enclosure. And since Britain’s Sovereign heads the Church of England (which frowns on divorce), the duke and his minions never tolerated divorced persons on the royal greensward.

“You could go coroneted to acclaim your Queen in Westminster Abbey with the stain of divorce on you,” wrote an angry Sunday Express columnist last year, “but you cannot, if so stained, have the duke’s permission to cheer her horse at Ascot.” Barred bluebloods saw red when divorced American Actor Douglas Fairbanks got into the enclosure. But there was nothing they could do. (Fairbanks got his passes through the U.S. embassy; had he been a British subject he would have stayed outside with his peers, Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Bertrand Russell and Randolph Churchill.)

Last week Bernard Marmaduke Fitz-Alan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, announced that Ascot would relax its rigid rules. From now on, participation in a divorce action will not be grounds for automatic exclusion from the royal enclosure. The same old rigid rules would still govern admission to the patch of ground immediately before the Queen’s box, known as the “Queen’s Lawn.” And now that the big barrier is down, said the duke, the size of the royal enclosure will be doubled.