Lucia Visconti

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.

[5] Between 1382 and 1384, Bernabò actively sought marriage negotiations for his infant daughter with Louis II, the Duke of Anjou and the future King of Naples.

Bernabò remained in close contact with Marie of Blois, widow of Louis I, attempting to come to terms on a marriage contract.

Gian Galeazzo, who succeeded his father in 1378, saw the impending marriage as a threat – an alliance which would enhance his uncle's position in the family at the expense of his own.

In 1399, when arrangements between the two of them were being discussed, Henry – whose first wife died in 1394 – was banished to France for ten years by King Richard II and had his lands taken.

[8] For Gian Galeazzo, political security came first and foremost and as such, he put the negotiations on hold, insisting that Henry return to favour at court before any further talks could proceed.

Instead, Gian Galeazzo offered Visconti to Frederick, son of the landgrave Balthasar of Thuringia, and they were married in 1399, but the marriage was never consummated and she was able to obtain an annulment on the grounds that she was forced into it.

[1] A musical piece entitled Più chiar che'l sol by Antonello da Caserta is believed to have been written for the wedding.

She decided to follow in the footsteps of her half-sister Donnina (who had married John Hawkwood, an English soldier) by approaching Henry for financial aid.

[19] However, the cost of maintaining her estates was too great,[20] and by July 1421, Visconti was residing at the medieval Holy Trinity Minories (she may have been there as early as September 1411), which was similar to a nunnery but was also known as a place where women of high status and money would live together.

It is believed that she lived in a townhouse built in 1352 by Elizabeth de Burgh, which had a reputation for housing women who were in tenuous political circumstances.

[21] Visconti's will bequeathed a portion of her unpaid dowry to various English nobles and other Italian immigrants, with the remainder (along with personal items) going to her steward, some ladies-in-waiting, her fool, and various religious institutions in Milan and England, including St. Mary Overy, Bourne Abbey in Lincolnshire (where Edmund was buried), and the Minoresses from Holy Trinity, but all of the recipients were equally unable to obtain the money from Milan.

However, Emperor Frederick III issued separate letters of marque in 1490, which enabled English agents to detain Milanese traders on the Rhine.