Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/655

Rh N O T N O T 597 tion of important documents. All registrars of ecclesias tical courts must be notaries. The office is still nominally an ecclesiastical one, though its duties are mainly of a secular character. &quot; The general functions of a notary consist in receiving all acts and con tracts which must or are wished to be clothed with an authentic form ; in conferring on such documents the re quired authenticity; in establishing their date; in preserv ing originals or minutes of them which, when prepared in the style and with the seal of the notary, obtain the name of original acts ; and in giving authentic copies of such acts&quot; (Brooke, On the Office of a Notary, chap. iii.). The act of a notary in authenticating or certifying a document is technically called a &quot;notarial act.&quot; In most countries the notarial act is received in evidence as a semi-judicial matter, and the certificate of a notary is probative of the facts certified. But English law does not recognize the notarial act to this extent. An English court will, in certain cases, take judicial notice of the seal of a notary, but not that the facts that he has certified are true, except in the case of a bill of exchange protested abroad. The most important part of an English notary s duty at the present day is the noting and protest of foreign bills of exchange in case of non-acceptance or non-payment. This must be done by a notary in order that the holder may recover. He also prepares ship protests and protests of other kinds relating to mercantile matters. The office of notary is now usually, though not necessarily, held by a solicitor. In London he must be free of the Scriveners Company. The principal statutes relating to English notaries are 25 Henry VIII. c. 21 ; 41 George III. c. 79 : 3 and 4 William IV. c. 70 ; 6 and 7 Viet. c. 90. In Scotland, before the reign of James III., papal and imperial notaries practised until the third parliament of that king, held at Edinburgh on the 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 Scot land 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, &quot; by whatsoever power he be created,&quot; should use the office &quot;except he first present himself to the said lords, showing his creation, and be admitted by them thereto.&quot; 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 has in Scotland exercised full and exclusive authority on the admission of notaries in all legal matters, spiritual and temporal. The position of notaries in Scotland is somewhat higher than it is in England. Certain facts connected with the title to land must be authenticated by notarial instrument, 21 and 22 Viet. c. 76. A notary may exe cute a deed for a person unable to write, 37 and 38 Viet. c. 94, s. 41. The parish clergyman has notarial powers to the extent of executing a will, a relic of the old ecclesiastical position of notaries. In America the duties of a notary vary in different States. &quot;They are generally as follows : to protest bills of exchange and draw up acts of honour ; to authenticate and certify copies of documents ; to receive the affidavits of mariners and draw up protests relating to the same ; to attest deeds and other instruments ; and to admini ster oaths &quot; (Bouvier, Law Dictionary}. NOTICE. The primary meaning of notice is know ledge (notitici), as in &quot;judicial notice;&quot; thence it comes to signify the means of bringing to knowledge, as in &quot; notice to quit;&quot; at last it maybe used even for the actual writing by which notice is given. The most important legal uses of the word are judicial notice and the equitable doctrine of notice. Judicial notice is the recognition by courts of justice of certain facts or events without proof. Thus in England the courts take judicial notice of the existence of states and sovereigns recognized by the sovereign of England, of the dates of the calendar, the date and place of the sittings of the legislature, &c. The equitable doc trine of notice, so called because it was a doctrine formerly peculiar to the courts of equity, is that a person who purchases an estate, although for valuable consideration, after notice of a prior equitable right, will not be enabled by getting in the legal estate to defeat that right. On the other hand, a purchaser for valuable consideration without notice of an adverse title is as a rule protected in his enjoyment of the property. Other common uses of the word are notice to quit, notice of dishonour, notice of action (generally necessary in case of a breach of duty created by statute), notice of trial, notice in lieu of service of a writ (where the defendant is a foreigner out of the jurisdiction), notice to produce, &c. Notice may be either express or constructive. The latter is where knowledge of a fact is presumed from the circumstances of the case, e.g., notice to a solicitor is usually constructive notice to the client. Notice may be either oral or written. It is usually advisable to give written notice even where oral evidence is sufficient in law, as in the case of notice to quit. The American use of notice is practically the same as in England. NOTKER, a name of somewhat frequent occurrence in the ecclesiastical history of the Middle Ages. Among those by whom it was borne two are specially distinguished. NOTKER BALBTTLUS (c. 840-912) was a native of northern Switzerland, and, having become a monk of the monastery of St Gall, held the position of &quot; magister &quot; in its school for many years. He was canonized in 1513. Balbulus compiled a martyrology and was the author of other works, but is mentioned principally in connexion with his services to church music and with the &quot; sequences &quot; of which he was the composer. See HYMNS, vol. xii. p. 583. NOTKER LABEO, also a monk of St Gall, died on 29th June 1022. His translations of the Old Testament Psalms, the De Consolatione of Boetius, the Categories of Aristotle, and some other works into Old High German are of con siderable philological interest. See vol. x. p. 517. NOTO, a city of Italy, in the province of Syracuse (Sicily), 24 miles south-west of Syracuse by road on the way to Modica. Built on a new site after the earthquake of 1693, it is laid out in modern style, and contains a number of handsome mansions belonging to the provincial aristocracy. The population of the city was 15,925 in 1881 ; that of the commune, 16,590 in 1871, reached 18,239 in 1881. Netum or Neetum (NfyTov) A -as one of the cities left to Hiero of Syracuse by the treaty of 263 B.C. Like Messina and Tauro- nienium (Taormina) it was a fosderata civitas in the time of Cicero, and at a later date it still enjoyed the rare privileges of a Latin town. Under the Saracens it was a place of importance and gave its name to one of the divisions of the island, Val di Noto. It was one of the last of the towns of Sicily to surrender to Roger the Norman. In 1837 it was made capital of the province instead of Syracuse, but this dig nity was restored to the larger city by the new Italian parliament. NOTTINGHAM or NOTTS, an inland cou.ity of England, Plate is bounded N. by Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, W. by xxl - Derbyshire, S. by Leicestershire, and E. by Lincolnshire. It is of an irregular oval shape, its length from rorth to south being about 50 miles, and its greatest breadtn from east to west about 25 miles. The area is 527,752 acres, or nearly 825 square miles. The surface, though for the most part low, generally presents a pleasant diversity of hill and dale. The northern part is included in the great plain of York, and in the extreme north there is some extent of marshes. The valley of the lower Trent and that of the Idle are also very flat. In the south-west, between Nottingham and Warspp, the undulations swell into considerable elevations, reaching near Mansfield a height of about 600 feet. This district includes Sherwood Forest, of which, in 1609, there were 44,839 acres enclosed, 9486 woods, and 35,080 waste.