BATTEN, SIR WILLIAM (floruit 1626-1667), British sailor, son of Andrew Batten, master in the royal navy, first appears as taking out letters of marque in 1626, and in 1638 he obtained the post of surveyor to the navy, probably by purchase. In March 1642 he was appointed second-in-command under the earl of Warwick, the parliamentary admiral who took the fleet out of the king’s hands. 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, and up to the end of the First Civil War showed himself a steady partisan of the parliament. 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 Holland, May 1648, Batten went with them. He was knighted by the prince, but being suspected by the Royalists, was put ashore mutinously in Holland and returned to England. He lived in retirement during the Commonwealth period. At the Restoration Sir William Batten became once more surveyor of the navy. In this office he was in constant intercourse with Pepys, whose diary frequently mentions him; but the insinuations of Pepys against him must not be taken too seriously, as there is no evidence to show that Batten in making a profit from his office fell below the standards of the time. In 1661 he became M.P. for Rochester, and in 1663 he was made master of the Trinity House. He died in 1667.
There is no separate life of Batten, but many notices of him will be found in Penn’s Life of Sir W. Penn, and in Pepys’ Diary.
BATTEN, (1) A term (a form of “baton”) used in joinery (q.v.) for a board not more than 4 to 7 in. broad or 3 in. thick, used for various purposes, such as for strengthening or holding together laths and other wood-work; and specially, on board ship, a strip of wood nailed to a mast to prevent rubbing, or fixing down a tarpaulin over a hatchway, in rough weather, to keep out water. (2) A verb (the root is found in words of several Teutonic languages meaning profit or improvement, and also in the English “better” and “boot”) meaning to improve in condition, especially in the case of animals by feeding; so, to feed gluttonously; the word is used figuratively of prospering at the expense of another.
BATTENBERG, the name of a family of German counts which died out about 1314, whose seat was the castle of Kellerburg, near Battenberg, a small place now in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. The title was revived in 1851, when Alexander (1823-1888), a younger son of Louis II., grand-duke of Hesse, contracted a morganatic marriage with a Polish lady, Countess Julia Theresa von Haucke (1825-1895), who was then created countess of Battenberg. Raised to the rank of a princess in 1858, the countess and her children were allowed to style themselves princes and princesses of Battenberg, with the addition of Durchlaucht or Serene Highness. The eldest son of this union, Louis Alexander (b. 1854), married in 1884 Victoria, daughter of Louis IV., grand-duke of Hesse, and became an admiral in the British navy. The second son, Alexander Joseph (q.v.), was prince of Bulgaria from 1879 to 1886. The third son, Henry Maurice, was born in 1858, and married on the 23rd of July 1885 Beatrice, youngest daughter of Victoria, queen of England. He died at sea on the 20th of January 1896 when returning from active service with the British troops during the Ashanti War, and left three sons and a daughter, Victoria Eugénie, who was married in 1906 to Alphonso XIII., king of Spain. The fourth son, Francis Joseph, born in 1861, married in 1897 Anna, daughter of Nicholas I., prince of Montenegro, and is the author of Die volkswirtschaftliche Entwickelung Bulgariens von 1879 bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1891). The only daughter of the princess of Battenberg, Marie Caroline, born in 1852, was married in 1871 to Gustavus Ernest, prince and count of Erbach-Schönberg.
BATTER, an architectural term of unknown origin, used of the face of a wall which is slightly inclined to the perpendicular. It is most commonly employed in retaining walls, the lower courses of which are laid at right angles to the batter, so as to resist the thrust of the earth inside. For aesthetic reasons it is often adopted in the lowest or basement porticos of a great building. From a historical point of view it is the most ancient system employed, as throughout Egypt and Chaldaea all the temples built in unburnt brick were perforce obliged to be thicker at the bottom, and this gave rise to the batter or raking side which was afterwards in Egypt copied in stone. For defensive purposes the walls of the lower portions of a fortress were built with a batter as in the case of the tower of David and some of the walls built by Herod at Jerusalem. The Crusaders also largely adopted the principle, which was followed in some of the castles of the middle ages throughout Europe.