 After the dissolution of the monasteries the estate had been granted to Geoffrey Chamber, who worked for the Court of Augmentations, and then in January 1547 to Sir Pedro Gamboa, a Spanish soldier in the service of the English government.Blagge's opportunity to lease Great Stanmore occurred because Gamboa was assassinated, alongside a comrade, in London on 19 January 1550.When the manor of Maidstone was granted to Robert Wyatt the Younger on 13 June 1550, as part of a general disposal of former ecclesiastical property, Blagge's interests were scrupulously protected.