Sir William Batten (c. 1600 – 1667) was an English naval officer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1661 to 1667.
Batten was the son of Andrew Batten, master in the Royal Navy. In 1625 he was stated to be one of the commanders of two ships sent on a whaling voyage to Spitsbergen by the Yarmouth merchant Thomas Horth.[1] In August 1626 he took out letters of marque for the Salutation of London, owned by Andrew Hawes and others.[2] He was master of the Salutation again in 1628, [3] and in April of the following year Batten, along with Horth and Hawes, was ordered by the Privy Council not to send up the Salutation, now of Yarmouth, to "Greenland" (Spitsbergen), but they sent her and another ship up anyways.[4] The ships of the Muscovy Company seized both ships at Spitsbergen and drove them away clean (empty).[5] In 1630 he was master and part-owner of the Charles of London, and in 1635 was still serving as a master in the merchant service.[6] In 1638 he obtained the post of Surveyor of the Navy, probably by purchase.
In March 1642 Batten was appointed second-in-command under the Earl of Warwick, the parliamentary admiral who took the fleet out of the kings hands, and up to the end of the First Civil War showed himself a steady partisan of the parliament.. It was Vice-Admiral Batten's squadron which bombarded Scarborough when Henrietta Maria landed there. He was accused (it appears unjustly) by the Royalists of directing his fire particularly on the house occupied by the queen. In 1644 he was at Plymouth, where he fortified the tip of the peninsula which has ever since been called Mount Batten.[7] To the end of the First Civil War, Batten continued to patrol the English seas, and his action in 1647 in bringing into Portsmouth a number of Swedish ships of war and merchantmen, which had refused the customary salute to the flag, was approved by parliament.
When the Second Civil War began he was distrusted by the Independents and removed from his command, though he confessed his continued willingness to serve the state. When part of the fleet revolted against the parliament, and joined the Prince of Wales in May 1648, Batten went with them. He was knighted by the Prince, but being suspected by the Royalists, was put ashore mutinously in Holland. He returned to England and lived in retirement during the Commonwealth period.
At the Restoration Batten became once more Surveyor of the Navy. In this office he was in constant communication with Samuel Pepys, who mentions him frequently in his diary. Pepys made insinuations against him but there is no evidence to show that Batten, in making a profit from his office, fell below the standards of the time.
Batten was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochester in 1661 for the Cavalier Parliament and held the seat until his death in 1667.[8] In 1663 he was made Master of Trinity House.