A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices/Battie, William
Admitted 27 January, 1742-3.
Son of the Rev. Edward Battle, of Modbury, co. Devon, where he was born in 1704. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where, after a drawn election, he obtained the Craven Scholarship in 1725. He obtained the degree of M.D. in 1737, and began to practise physic. He subsequently practised at Uxbridge and in London, and became a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1738, and President in 1764. He was an authority in lunacy matters and gave evidence before the Committee, which led to the Lunacy Act of 1774. He died 13 June, 1776.
His literary works consist of an edition of Aristotle's Rhetoric, published in 1728, and of Isocrates' Orations, 1729. He subsequently published his Harveian and Lumleian Orations, and a work on Madness, in 1758.