NOTARY, in its original signification, was applied to a person (notarius) employed to take notes (notæ) of trials and other judicial proceedings in the Roman courts. These notarii represented in some measure our modern reporters, and, like them, employed symbols of abbreviation, or a species of short-hand, to facilitate the reporting of a speaker's words. This appears from various passages in classical and ancient writers, such as Manlius and Martial. The notarii were generally slaves; and, in addition to their ordinary duties, not unfrequently took down a man's will in writing, and were sometimes called upon to attend the prefects in the capacity of transcribers, and attest the acts of spiritual dignities when the empire became Christian. In the fourth century the notarii received the name of exceptores, and the functionaries corresponding most nearly to the modern notaries were termed tabelliones. The business of the latter was to draw up contracts, wills, and other legal instruments. It is impossible to determine when notaries were first known in England. As early as the time of Edward the Confessor we read of charters being executed by notaries for the royal chancellor. The power of admitting notaries to practise seems to have been vested in the Archbishop of Canterbury by the 25 Hen. VIII., c. 21, sec. 4. The term of a notary's apprenticeship, and the manner of his admission to practise, are regulated by the act 41 Geo. III., c.
79, and amended by the 3 and 4 Will. IV., c. 70, and 6 and 7 Vict., c. 90. The recent statutes, 20 and 21 Vict., cc. 77, 85, for the abolition of the ecclesiastical courts, do not affect the notaries. As appears from countless allusions in our literature, it was customary in former times for notaries to make all kinds of legal instruments. Their occupation is now limited to the attestation of contracts and writings of a mercantile kind, to their authentication in a foreign country, to the protestation of bills of exchange, &c. They also receive and take the affidavits of masters and mariners of ships. The notaries have to pay an annual certificate duty, like attorneys, solicitors, and proctors; and in the stamp act, 44 Geo. 3, c. 98, prohibiting persons not duly qualified from preparing deeds relating to real or personal estate, notaries, as well as attorneys, &c., are excepted, subject to their taking out their annual certificates.
In Scotland, before the reign of James III., papal and imperial notaries practised until the third Parliament of that king, held at Edinburgh on 29th November 1469, when an act was passed declaring that notaries should be made by the king. It would appear, however, that for some time afterwards there were in Scotland two kinds of notaries, clerical and legal,—the instruments taken by the latter bearing faith in civil matters. In 1551 an act was passed directing sheriffs to bring or send both kinds of notaries to the lords of Session to be examined; and in a subsequent statute, passed in 1555, it was ordained that no notary, "by whatsoever power he be created," should use the office "except he first present himself to the said lords, showing his creation, and be admitted by them thereto." It does not appear that this statute vested the right of making notaries in the Court of Session; but in 1563 it was by law declared that no person should take on him the office, under the pain of death, unless created by the sovereign's special letters, and thereafter examined and admitted by the lords of Session. Since then the Court of Session have in Scotland exercised full and exclusive authority on the admission of notaries in all legal matters, spiritual and temporal. It is the privilege of notaries to expedite the instruments by which a proprietor is infeft or feudally vested in land, to protest bills, to authenticate copies of writings, and generally to do what is usually done by the notary in England.