Author: Battine, William
Biography:
BATTINE, William (1755-1836: ODNB)
He was born on 25 Jan. 1755 and baptised on 26 Feb. at East Marden, Sussex, the son and heir of William Battine, sometime Surveyor of the Coast of Sussex and Commissioner of Taxes, and his wife Wilhelmina Paauw, who had married at Westbury, Wiltshire, on 14 May 1754. He was educated at Eton and initially entered Trinity College Cambridge as a pensioner in 1774 but migrated to Trinity Hall (Scholar 1775, LLB 1780, LLD 1785, Fellow 1788-1836). He had earlier entered the Middle Temple in May 1773. He pursued a legal career and was Advocate in Doctors’ Commons (1785-1836), Advocate-General to the High Court of Admiralty (1791-1803), and Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln (1796-1836). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1797. In addition to inherited wealth, he had a large practice in the Admiralty and Ecclesiastical Courts, but appears to have squandered all of it. He underwent bankruptcy proceedings 1831-34 and lived in poverty in old age. He died, unmarried, on 5 Sept. 1836, at Fitzroy Place, Southwark Bridge Road, South London, and was buried, as he had requested, at St. George the Martyr, Southwark. He left small amounts of money and goods to various people, and his books, papers and writings to a John Dixon of Sylvan Grove, Old Kent Road, Southwark. Nothing, however, was published posthumously, and the work listed here, written to counter the “ blasphemy” of Byron’s Cain: A Mystery (1822) has largely been forgotten but should probably be better known. (ODNB 10 Nov. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 10 Nov. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 10 Nov. 2022; Morning Advertiser 6 Sept. 1836) AA