approvement

plural approvements

1. Old EnglishcountableobsoleteuncountablelawImprovement of common lands by converting them for advantage of the landlord.
2. archaiccountableuncountableApproval; approbation.

   I did nothing without your approvement.

   a. 1628 (date written), John Hayward, The Life, and Raigne of King Edward the Sixt, London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press, and J. Lichfield at Oxford?] for Iohn Partridge, […], published 1630, →OCLC

3. UKcountableobsoleteuncountablelawA confession of guilt by a prisoner charged with treason or felony, together with an accusation or implication against the accomplices and a giving evidence against them in order to obtain his own pardon.

   The whole learning of approvements (i. e. trial by the evidence of an approver) is now obsolete being superseded by the modern practice of allowing an accused person to turn evidence for the Queen without confessing the indictment.

   1861, John Henry Willan, A Manual of the Criminal Law of Canada, page 7