On Brandon's death in 1545, the Crown granted Henham to Sir Arthur Hopton of Blythburgh who immediately sold the estate to Sir Anthony Rous, Knight, of Dennington, near Stradbroke in Suffolk. In 1773, while Sir John Rous, 6th Baronet (from 1821 1st Earl of Stradbroke) was away on a Grand Tour of Venice, his drunken butler had a mishap with a candle, which destroyed the building. The £30,000 loss represented eight years' income from the estate, and the substantial blow meant that it was to be twenty years before he could afford to rebuild.