Born at Worcester on 24 December 1751, he was son of Samuel Nott, a German courtier in favour with George III.
He studied surgery in Birmingham, under the instruction of Edmund Hector; in London under Sir Cæsar Hawkins, with whose family he was connected; and in Paris.
On Warren's recommendation he attended Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire and her sister Lady Duncannon, as their physician, to the continent, and continued in that post until 1793.
His Nott's verse renderings of the poems of Catullus, Propertius, and of the Basia of Johannes Secundus, were reprinted in Bohn's Classical Library.
Charles Lamb possessed a copy of these Selections from the Lyric and Satiric Poems of George Wither, interleaved with manuscript notes by Nott that irritated him.