Definition
Approvement is an archaic English legal term with two distinct meanings drawn from criminal law and property law respectively.
1. Criminal law (primary legal meaning): A procedure by which a person indicted for treason or felony confessed guilt before pleading and then formally accused and gave evidence against accomplices in the same crime, in exchange for a pardon. The confessing party was called an approver (also probator); the person accused by the approver was called the appellee. The approver's accusation functioned as a species of appeal — a private criminal accusation — and the appellee could demand trial by battle or by jury. If the approver failed to sustain the accusations against all named accomplices, the pardon was forfeited and the approver faced execution.
2. Property law (secondary legal meaning): In English land law, the act by which a lord of a manor enclosed part of a common or waste ground for private cultivation or improvement, provided sufficient common remained for commoners to exercise their rights of pasturage and access (egress and regress). The term derives from the idea of turning land to profit or "improving" it for the lord's benefit.
A third, looser usage appears in older texts simply meaning approval or approbation, but this sense carried no specific legal content and has not persisted.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Wiktionary records three senses — improvement of common lands by a landlord, approval or approbation generally, and the criminal law confession-and-accusation procedure.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's defines approvement primarily as a confession of guilt by a prisoner charged with treason or felony, with an accusation of accomplices made to obtain pardon, and notes that the term was no longer in use, having been replaced by "turning king's (or queen's) evidence" in England and "state's evidence" in the United States.
The principal trap for researchers is the word's surface resemblance to "approval" or "approbation." In a legal source, approvement almost never means simple approval. The criminal law meaning is the dominant legal sense; the property law sense requires context involving commons and waste land to be operative.
Common Confusion
Approvement (criminal) vs. turning state's evidence / king's evidence: These are functionally equivalent procedures across different periods and jurisdictions, but they are not identical mechanisms. Approvement was a formal common law process tied to the appeal of felony, with its own procedural rules including the possibility of trial by battle. Turning state's or queen's evidence is an informal evidentiary arrangement without the same procedural apparatus. Researchers encountering approvement in historical sources should not assume it maps cleanly onto modern cooperation agreements or plea bargains.
Approvement (property) vs. enclosure: The property sense of approvement is narrower than general enclosure. Approvement applied specifically to a lord's right to enclose waste or common land while leaving adequate common for existing commoners. General enclosure extinguished common rights entirely. The two processes had different legal bases and different consequences for commoners.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The criminal law form produced two recognized parties:
- Approver (probator): the confessing accused who names accomplices.
- Appellee: the accomplice named and accused by the approver.
The property law form was governed in England by the Statute of Merton (1235) and the Statute of Westminster II (1285), which defined the conditions under which a lord could lawfully approve waste or common land.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are most likely to encounter approvement in one of three contexts: (1) pre-modern English criminal proceedings, particularly Year Books and early treatises on felony and treason; (2) English land law materials dealing with common rights and manorial history; or (3) American sources from the colonial and early republic period that surveyed English criminal procedure.
In the criminal law context, the term disappears from American practice very early. By the time of the founding generation, approvement as a formal procedure had no American counterpart. References to it in American legal dictionaries are essentially historical glosses, not descriptions of living law. Researchers using 19th-century American sources should treat any mention of approvement as a backward-looking reference to English practice.
In the property law context, approvement is almost exclusively an English concept tied to manorial tenure and common rights. It will not appear in American property law except in comparative or historical treatments. Researchers working in English legal history — particularly on enclosure movements, copyhold tenure, or the Statutes of Merton and Westminster — will find the term operative and important.
The general "approbation" sense appears occasionally in older American legal writing but carries no technical weight. When Hayward uses "approvement" to mean personal approval (as quoted in Webster's), that is not a legal usage and should not be treated as one.
Cross-period research alert: Because the same word covers two completely unrelated legal concepts (criminal confession procedure and manorial land improvement), context is essential. A text discussing commons, waste, and lords almost certainly uses the property sense. A text discussing felony, treason, or accomplices is using the criminal sense.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree that approvement in criminal law is a species of confession coupled with accusation of accomplices, made before plea, to obtain pardon. Black's (both editions) and Burrill are consistent on this core description. Burrill adds the property law sense and the older sense of "profits of land," which Black's omits — a notable gap in Black's coverage for researchers working in English property history.
Burrill's entry is the most complete across both meanings, reflecting his broader attention to English legal Latin and land law. He identifies the Latin forms (approveamentum, appruamentum) and notes both the enclosure and cultivation dimensions of the property sense, as well as the archaic meaning of "profits of land" with a citation to Crompton's Jurisdiction of Courts.
Webster's 1913, though not a law dictionary, correctly identifies that the criminal law procedure was obsolete and had been functionally replaced by state's evidence / king's evidence — a point the legal dictionaries do not make as explicitly. That editorial observation from a general dictionary is, paradoxically, more useful for orienting modern researchers than the bare definitions in the legal sources.
None of the source dictionaries address the Statute of Merton connection directly, which is a gap for property researchers. The statutory basis for the lord's approvement right is not captured in these dictionary entries and must be sought in treatises and primary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Approvement in both its criminal and property senses is essentially English law. The criminal procedure had no formal adoption in American jurisdictions; American courts developed independent doctrines around accomplice testimony and cooperation agreements. The property sense has no American analog because American land law did not carry forward the manorial common rights system that gave the doctrine its meaning.