Definition of "arbitrament"

As the diversities of the Circles described in the Spheres are meerely imaginarie; so the division of the Zodiake is not materiall, or of the first Creation, but onely fayned by the will and arbitrement of the Astrologers, that thereby they may know the Beginnings and the End of the Heavens Motion.

1620, John Melton, Astrologaster, Or, The Figure-Caster. […], London: Barnard Alsop, for Edward Blackmore, page 14; Reprinted (facsimile) under the same name in (Special Publication; 174x), William Andrews Clark Library: The Augustan Reprint Society, 1975

This oration […] he concluded with a flourish of his cudgel, and enforced with such determined refusals to leave them, that they found it impossible to bring the cause to mortal arbitrement at that time, and strolled about the park in profound silence […] .

1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […]

Several powerful prices had contended for her alliance, and her father who was a king of wondrous shrewdness, to avoid making enemies by showing partiality had referred them to the arbitrement of arms.

1852, Washington Irving, Tales from the Alhambra

They assert that the right may be given by the Fourteenth Amendment but the remedy can be refused by the public, and as we understand Hall and DeCuir, the courts of civil jurisdiction have only the office of affirming their discretionary arbitrament, as the Supreme Court did in that celebrated cause.

1889, Brotherhood of Liberty, Justice and Jurisprudence