 Before he had long been Seymour's steward, Thynne began to build up his own estates in the west of England and Oxfordshire.On 11 April 1539, he took a twenty-one-year lease of the rectory of Clawton in Devon, when he was described as a resident of London.His greatest prize was the former Carthusian Longleat Priory, together with land in three parishes on the borders of Wiltshire and Somerset, which he bought on his own account in 1540.