Definition
Approveamentum is a Latin term from old English law denoting an approvement or improvement of land — specifically, the act by which a lord of a manor was permitted to enclose and cultivate portions of common land or waste ground, provided that sufficient common remained for the tenants entitled to use it. The term is the Latinized form of the English word "approvement" as used in medieval and early modern land law.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering approveamentum in historical English legal records should treat it as a direct pointer to the doctrine of approvement — a landlord's prerogative closely associated with the Statute of Merton (1235) and the Statute of Westminster II (1285). These statutes, not the Latin term itself, are the operative sources; the term appears primarily in Latinate legal pleadings, court rolls, and treatises of the medieval and early modern periods rather than in substantive doctrinal discussion.
Because approveamentum is simply the Latinized form of "approvement," research should pivot quickly to the English-language term and its surrounding doctrine. Historical sources indexed under the Latin form may be sparse; the bulk of case law, commentary, and statutory treatment appears under "approvement" or "improvement of common." Cowell's Interpreter — cited by Burrill — is one of the few early glossaries to use the Latin form directly, making it a useful anchor for period sources but not a comprehensive doctrinal reference.
Researchers working in manorial court records, plea rolls, or chancery documents from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries are most likely to encounter this form. By the eighteenth century, English legal writing had largely abandoned the Latin and written "approvement" without qualification. Any transition-era document (roughly 1600–1700) may use either form or both interchangeably.
The term has no meaningful modern legal life in either English or American law. Its appearance in a contemporary document would signal either archaism, deliberate antiquarian citation, or an error.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry among the Law Mind shelf sources, and it is notably brief: a one-line cross-reference defining approveamentum as "an approvement, or improvement" and routing the reader to Cowell. This brevity is itself informative — it signals that the Latin form was recognized as a term of art but carried no distinct legal content beyond its English equivalent. Burrill does not define the doctrine; he translates the word and moves on.
Cowell's Interpreter (referenced by Burrill) is the historical authority here. Cowell treated approvement as a lord's right to improve waste land against the claims of commoners, subject to the sufficiency-of-pasture limitation established by statute. Neither Burrill nor Cowell is a source for the doctrine's full contours; for that, researchers must turn to the statutes themselves and to Blackstone's Commentaries (Book II, Chapter 3), which treats approvement as part of the law of common and waste without using the Latin form.
No other Law Mind shelf source carries this term, which reflects both its rarity and its purely transliterative character — it adds nothing to the English "approvement" except the formal Latin dress of medieval pleading.
Jurisdictional Note
Approveamentum, and the doctrine of approvement it names, are creatures of English common law with no direct American counterpart. American land law did not inherit the manorial structure that gave approvement its context, and the Statutes of Merton and Westminster II were not universally received as part of American common law. Researchers in American property law should not expect the term or the doctrine to appear in domestic sources.