| King Jacques I had, while a prisoner at Genoa, married
Heloise de Brunswick Grubenhagen, and there his son Janus was born, who afterwards
succeeded him. Jacques I was on terms of great
friendship with Richard II, king of England, and in 1393 received a visit from Henry
Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV of England, on his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
In the same year, Leo de Lusignan, fifth Latin king of Armenia, died leaving no heir, and
the title devolved on his cousin, the king of Cyprus. Jacques was in 1396 proclaimed king
of Armenia in the cathedral of St. Sophia, and passed on the title to his successors in
the Lusignan dynasty. But it was and empty title. Of the kingdom of Armenia nothing had
remained but the citadel of Courico, which still defied the efforts of the Turks to
recapture it.
During the sixteen years of his reign King Jacques I was
in constant conflict with the Genoese in Famagusta. to protect the Mesaoria plain from
their incursions, he repaired the castle of Kantara, fortified Larnaca, and constructed a
series of forts and blockhouses on the line between Kantara and Larnaca as a defence
frontier. Larnaca, or Les Salines, as it was then called, became the principal trading
port of the Lusignan kingdom, in place of Famagusta, which began to decline under the
Genoese. The king later died in 1398.
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