Definition
A note of allowance was a procedural document in English common law practice, issued by a master of the court to a party in a civil cause who had alleged error in law in the record and proceedings. Receipt of the note formally permitted that party to bring a writ of error to challenge the judgment. It functioned as a threshold authorization — without it, the aggrieved party could not proceed to error review on a point of law.
The term belongs entirely to a now-abolished procedural regime and has no operative legal meaning in modern English or American practice.
Common Confusion
The phrase "note of allowance" surfaces in patent practice with an entirely different meaning: the USPTO issues a Notice of Allowance when a patent application has been approved for grant. These two usages share only surface-level vocabulary. The historical common law note of allowance concerns appellate error procedure; the USPTO notice of allowance concerns intellectual property prosecution. Researchers encountering either term in a historical or modern corpus should confirm context before drawing any connection between them.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a historical artifact with a fixed and narrow meaning. Several points bear on corpus research:
First, the procedural context is specific to English practice under the common law writ system. The note of allowance operated within the error process governed by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 (§ 149), under which a party alleging legal error in the record applied to a master, who issued the note as a condition of proceeding. American courts borrowed English procedural forms extensively, but the note of allowance as a distinct instrument did not take hold in American practice with the same formality. Researchers working in pre-Civil War American sources should be cautious about assuming the term carries the same procedural weight it did in English courts.
Second, the term became obsolete in England with the Judicature Act 1875, Order LVIII, rule 1, which abolished the writ of error. After that date, error proceedings were replaced by a modernized appellate structure, and the procedural machinery that gave rise to the note of allowance disappeared entirely. Any source using this term in an English legal context dates from before 1875 or is discussing prior practice historically.
Third, researchers must not conflate this term with the USPTO Notice of Allowance, which is live and in constant use in patent prosecution. The two terms appear in wholly separate bodies of law and entirely different centuries of practice. Keyword searches across mixed corpora — particularly those spanning historical English law and modern American administrative practice — will return false positives without careful filtering.
Fourth, the note's function as a supersedeas is worth noting for procedural historians. Rapalje & Lawrence indicate that error proceedings in law were deemed a supersedeas of execution from the time of service, meaning that once the process was initiated (the note being a prerequisite), enforcement of the judgment below was stayed. This connection between the note of allowance and the suspension of execution is a doctrinal nuance that Black's and Bouvier's do not emphasize.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier's are in complete agreement on the core definition, which is unsurprising — this is a narrow procedural term with a single established meaning. All three define it identically as a note delivered by a master to a party alleging error in law in the record and proceedings, authorizing the bringing of error.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most informative of the three sources. It alone cites the governing statute (Common Law Procedure Act 1852, § 149), identifies the abolishing authority (Judicature Act 1875), and notes the supersedeas effect of error proceedings. The fragment in Rapalje referencing "Express. — Actual" at the end of the entry appears to be a typographical or editorial artifact from an adjacent entry in the source text, not part of the note of allowance definition.
Black's and Bouvier's, by contrast, offer only the bare definition. Neither explains the procedural mechanism that made the note necessary, the statutory basis, nor the term's abolition. Researchers relying on Black's or Bouvier's alone will understand what the term meant but will not understand why it mattered procedurally or when it ceased to exist.
No modern legal dictionary treats this term as operative. It appears in contemporary sources only in historical discussions of the English writ system.
Jurisdictional Note
The note of allowance was a creature of English common law practice. American courts developed their own error and appellate procedures without uniformly adopting this specific instrument. The term will appear in American sources primarily through secondary materials discussing English practice or in early colonial and federal courts that closely followed English procedure.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses English error procedure or the writ of error. The matching entries suggested — covering promissory notes, debt securities, and commercial lease allowances — share only terminological coincidence with this entry and are not relevant to the note of allowance as a procedural instrument.