Sir John died in 1696, having severely depleted the family's already precarious fortunes by building the house's state apartments. Sir John was succeeded by his son Philip, a weak spendthrift, but also a Member of Parliament for Somerset. At the time membership of Parliament was an expensive rich man's occupation and the Sydenham's money was running out. By 1697 Philip Sydenham was attempting to sell the estate for a price between £16,000 and £20,000. In the event of no purchaser being found, Sydenham mortgaged the estate to Thomas Penny, the Receiver-General of Somerset who collected Somerset's taxes for the crown. Penny made a few alterations to the mansion: he added the castellated and glazed porch to the South front, removing the earlier porch to the garden, where it became a clock tower. He also and made a new entrance to the Priest House. Penny then suffered a blow to his own fortunes: he was found to be rather cavalier in passing on the taxes he collected to the Crown, and was dismissed from office. He died in 1730 having executed no further work to the estate. The house and estate were then put up for auction in 1731 and sold for £15,492.10s. The Fanes The new owner was Francis Fane, a barrister and Member of Parliament. The Fanes completed the interior decoration of the state rooms, but other than that they are remarkable only for various eccentricities rather than their structural alterations. Francis Fane lived at Brympton d'Evercy for 26 years before bequeathing it to his brother Thomas, who became the 8th Earl of Westmorland. Thus again the house became a secondary residence and seemingly left largely empty until the time of John 10th Earl. This amorous adventurer had taken as his second wife Jane Saunders, the surgeon Richard Saunders Huck's daughter, who was so wildly eccentric that Charles Fox described her as "perhaps not mad, but nobody ever approached so near it with so much reason." The Countess decided to shock conventional society and leave her husband, taking her daughter Lady Georgiana Fane with her. This unconventional pair of ladies set up home at Brympton d'Evercy. The countess was responsible for installing the classical fireplaces which remain today, and assembling the furniture and art collection that were not dispersed until in a large sale in the late 1950s. Lady Georgiana Fane, like her mother of a lively disposition, declined