The first draft or rough minutes of an instrument or transaction; the original copy of a dispatch, treaty, or other document. Brande. A document serving as the preliminary to, or opening of, any diplomatic transaction. In old Scotch, practice. A book, marked by the clerk register, and delivered to a notary on his admission, in which he was directed to insert all the instruments he had occasion to execute; to be preserved as a record. Bell. In France, the minutes of notarial acts were formerely transcribed on registers, which were called “protocols.”