Lucia Visconti

rdf:langString Lucia Visconti

rdf:langString Lucia Visconti (c. 1380 – 14 April 1424) was a Milanese aristocrat who was the Countess of Kent by marriage from 1407 to 1424. She was one of fifteen legitimate children of Bernabò Visconti, who, along with his brother Galeazzo, was Lord of Milan. Her father negotiated for his infant daughter to marry Louis II of Anjou but Bernabò was deposed and the negotiations dropped. As a teenager, it was then intended that she marry the English noble Henry Bolingbroke, whom she had met as a girl, but after he was banished to France, the marriage negotiations were suspended. She was briefly wedded in 1399 to Frederick IV of Thuringia, the son of Landgrave Balthasar, before the marriage was annulled. In 1407 she married Edmund Holland, 4th Earl of Kent; there were no children. The relationship was troubled, as Edmund had had an affair shortly before the wedding, and a daughter from that relationship was born after they were married. In September 1408, Edmund was killed in battle. Henry IV guaranteed Visconti a third of the income from her portion of her husband's lands in England, but for the rest of her life she was constantly affected by money problems, as the dowry promised by her family upon her marriage was never paid: reprisals taken against Milanese merchants in London in 1464 and 1489 were probably both related to the unpaid dowry. Lucia, Countess of Kent, died in 1424 and was buried in Austin Friars, London.