Why did Elizabeth I think it necessary to keep Lady Mary Gray and her husband imprisoned?

[raccoon]

My understanding was that since he was a commoner, she wasn't a candidate for the throne any more anyway.

[snowybirdie]

1. Prhaps

they were too brown?

[Me.]

2. Wasn't Elizabeth

“The great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter, Mary, Jane was a first cousin once removed of Edward VI. In May 1553, she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of Edward's chief minister, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. In June 1553, Edward VI wrote his will, nominating Jane and her male heirs as successors to the Crown in part because his half-sister Mary was Roman Catholic while Jane was Protestant and would support the reformed Church of England, whose foundation Edward claimed to have laid. The will named his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate and removed them from succession. This step subverted their claims under the Third Succession Act.

After Edward's death, Jane was proclaimed queen on 10 July 1553 and awaited coronation in the Tower of London. Support for Mary grew very quickly and most of Jane's supporters abandoned her. The Privy Council decided to change sides and proclaimed Mary as queen on 19 July 1553, deposing Lady Jane. Her primary supporter, the Duke of Northumberland, was accused of treason and executed less than a month later. Jane was held as a prisoner at the Tower and was convicted of high treason in November 1553, which carried a sentence of death, though Mary initially spared her life. After her father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, became part of Wyatt's rebellion of January and February 1554 against Queen Mary's intention to marry Philip of Spain, Jane was viewed as a threat to the crown; both Jane and her husband were executed”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Jane_Grey

[raccoon]

3. No, Lady Mary Gray. She was Lady Jane Gray's younger sister. nt

[appalachiablue]

4. LADY MARY GREY (c. 1545 -April 1578) was potentially in line for the throne

like her older sisters Jane and Katherine Grey. The claim was through their parents Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Lady Frances Brandon, daughter of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Mary Tudor, the younger of the two daughters of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.
In 1565 Lady Mary Grey secretly married an 'unsuitable man,' Thomas Keyes, the Queen's serjeant porter without Elizabeth's permission. The Queen who was childless, permanently separated the newly married couple who could have produced heirs. In time other royals in the line of succession were eliminated including Mary's two sisters; marriages were annulled and children were declared illegitimate. Lady Mary became the last potential threat to succession from her family, but she died childless at age 33 after years of house arrest by the Queen, on April 20, 1578.
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Lady Mary Grey

(Wiki), Lady Mary Grey: Throne claims: As great-grandchildren of Henry VII, Mary and her sisters were potential heirs to the crown. When King Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, he left a Will (approved by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland) naming Mary's eldest sister, Jane, recently married to Northumberland's son Guildford Dudley, to succeed to the throne.
..However, Queen Elizabeth, who had acceded to the throne in November 1558, appointed Mary Grey as one of her Maids of Honour and granted her a pension of £80.
*Since Queen Elizabeth was childless, the two surviving Grey sisters were next in the line of succession under King Henry VIII's will, and were not permitted to marry without the Queen's permission. In December 1560, however, Katherine Grey secretly married Edward Seymour, the eldest son of the Protector Somerset, incurring the Queen's unrelenting displeasure...Both Katherine and her husband were confined to the Tower, and they were later held under house arrest...
[Lady Mary Grey's] marriage was an unsuitable one for many reasons. Keyes was from a minor gentry family in Kent, was more than twice Mary's age, and was a widower with six or seven children.
Moreover, Mary was described by the Spanish ambassador as 'little, crook-backed and very ugly', while Keyes stood 6 feet 8 inches tall. Sir William Cecil wrote to Sir Thomas Smith that 'The Sergeant Porter, being the biggest gentleman of this court, has married secretly the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the court ... The offence is very great'.

House arrest: Mary and her husband never saw each other again. The Queen confined Mary to house arrest with William Hawtrey (d. 1597) at Chequers in Buckinghamshire, where she remained for two years, while Keyes was committed to the Fleet. In August 1567 Mary, still under house arrest, was sent to live with her step-grandmother Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk, whom Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, had married after the death of Mary's grandmother Mary Tudor...
**With (her sister) Katherine Grey's death, Mary was brought to relative prominence as the next heir to Elizabeth under the will of Henry VIII; since Katherine Grey's two sons had been declared illegitimate, even the Queen had to take seriously Mary's position as heiress presumptive to the English throne. In June 1569 Mary was therefore sent to live with Sir Thomas Gresham at his house in Bishopsgate and later at his country house at Osterley. Her stay with the Greshams was an unhappy one, however, as Sir Thomas was now half blind and in constant physical pain, and his wife, Anne, bitterly resented Mary's presence in the household...

Later life: After enduring years in the Fleet, Mary's husband Thomas Keyes was released in 1569, and permitted to return to Kent. However, his health had been broken by the conditions of his imprisonment, and he died shortly before 3 September 1571. Mary begged Elizabeth for permission to bring up her husband's orphaned children from his first marriage, but her request was denied, and it was not until May 1572, after Mary had been under strict house arrest for seven years, that the Queen relented sufficiently to allow her to live where she pleased. However, for the time being Mary had no friends to take her in, and insufficient income to live independently. She continued to reside as an unwelcome guest...By February 1573 she was established in a house of her own in London in St Botolph's Without Aldgate, and by the end of 1577 she had been rehabilitated to the extent that she was appointed one of the Queen's Maids of Honour...

Death: In April 1578, while plague was raging in London, Mary became ill and drew up her will. She left her mother's jewels to her step-grandmother, the Duchess of Suffolk, gifts of plate to Lady Arundell and to Adrian Stokes's wife, and money to her godchild, Mary Merrick, a granddaughter of her late husband, Thomas Keyes. She died three days later on 20 April 1578, aged 33. The Queen granted her an imposing funeral in Westminster Abbey, with the Duchess of Suffolk's daughter Susan Bertie, now Countess of Kent, as chief mourner. She was buried in her mother's tomb in the Abbey, where her grave is still unmarked.
*In spite of the intrigues involving her sisters, it does not appear that Mary Grey ever made a serious claim to the throne. After her death, according to the terms of Henry VIII's will, the chief claimant became Margaret Stanley, Countess of Derby, the only surviving child of Eleanor Brandon, second daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister, Mary Tudor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Mary_Grey