William Sammes (died 1646) was an English lawyer and judge of the High Court of Admiralty for England and Wales . He was awarded the degree of Legum Doctor from Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1595 and spent the next four decades in private legal practice, until the outbreak of the First English Civil War in the early 1640s. In 1643 the sole Admiralty Court judge, Richard Zouch, was dismissed from office by Oliver Cromwell on suspicion of being a Royalist sympathiser. Cromwell's Lord High Admiral, Robert Rich, appointed Sammes as "acting Judge" in Zouch's place, and confirmed him as the permanent officeholder in 1644.