few pitiful household effects with which Mary arrived at her house in the Minories. Mary remained in the Duchess's household for almost two years, and is said to have been close to the Duchess's two children, Peregrine and Susan Bertie. On 27 January 1568, at the age of twenty-seven, after suffering years of imprisonment, house arrest, and separation from her husband and two young sons, Katherine Grey died at Cockfield Hall, the house of Sir Owen Hopton in Yoxford, Suffolk. According to De Lisle, it is possible that she had starved herself to death. With 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 claim 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 with the Greshams until Sir Thomas suggested that she be sent to live at Beaumanor in Leicestershire with her late mother's second husband, Adrian Stokes, who had recently married Anne Carew, the widow of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. In 1573 Mary left the Gresham household for good, 'with all her books and rubbish', as Sir Thomas put it. Mary did not stay long at Beaumanor. By February 1573, she was established in a house of her own in London in St Botolph's Without