Edmund married Mary Paynell, a Lincolnshire heiress, by whom he had a daughter Margaret and possibly other children. When Anthony died in February 1545/46 he was succeeded by his son Thomas, so the senior Rous line did not descend to Edmund. Landowner He has been called "impecunious", an "unscrupulous and disreputable knight". He was a justice of the peace for Suffolk from 1543 to 1547. During the 1540s Rous owned and leased various estates in Suffolk, including former monastic property at Dunwich, and manors including Middleton with Fordley (1544), and Westleton. He purchased Wetherden Hall, in Hitcham, Suffolk, in 1542 from Sir John Clere, and leased it to Sir John Spring of Lavenham: Spring however died in 1547, and by 1551 the hall had been purchased from Rous by George Waldegrave, nephew of Sir John Spring's wife. Edmund, then of Sibton, purchased lands and tenements in Westleton and Middleton from John Haughfen of Chillesford in 1547. He was the tenant of the site of the late monastery of Sibton, with the north grange and south grange, when Edward VI granted it, together with Rendham, to Sir Anthony Denny in 1547, and it was Sir Anthony who granted the manor of Rendham (Barnes) to him in that year. In 1550 he acquired the manor and messuage of Okynghill Hall at Badingham with its appurtenances, formerly of the Duke of Norfolk (attainted), as Thomas Hogan made grants to Edmund Rous, and to Anthony Rous of Badingham. In September 1552 Edmund Rous, of Dunwich, had licence to grant his manor of Rendham Barnes to Robert Hacon of Rendham. In a land dispute of the later 1540s he legally challenged the existence of the Corporation of Dunwich. In 1550 he complained to the Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations that there were still two chantries functioning in Dunwich, one for the Maison Dieu (a hospital for the poor) and one for the parish church of St James, which led to the seizure of the documents and common seal of the house from the representatives of the Bailiffs. Favour under Marian rule Sir Edmund was knighted c. 1550. His service in Ireland appears to have begun in 1553, possibly in respect of his loyalty to Queen Mary in the succession crisis of that year: he became Vice-Treasurer of Ireland by December 1553. He was, nonetheless, in England for the elections of April 1554, when he