In 1277, apparently in order to lend dignity to an assembly performing such high duties, a measure was passed which rigidly excluded from the Council all persons who were not of legitimate birth. In 1286 the Council of Forty, in order to assure to the nobles a constant and legal supremacy, proposed to limit eligibility for their own number to the members of the Grand Council, and to those only whose fathers and paternal grandfathers had already sat there. This attempt failed, and the bill was rejected, principally owing to the opposition of the Doge, Giovanni Dandolo, who was an honest man, free from the prejudices and passions of caste, and who wished the aristocracy to maintain its position by sheer superiority of intelligence and judgment without any legalised privileges. [Sidenote: _Mol. Dogaressa._] At that time, as has been shown in a separate chapter, the families of Partecipazio, Candiano, and Orseolo, and most of all the Tiepolo, had assumed the position of princes in the Republic. Each of them could boast of several doges, and all hoped to make the dignity hereditary for themselves. The Tiepolo cherished the most ambitious designs, and were always doing their best to win over the people. In 1289, on the death of Dandolo, the electors within the palace heard the populace under the windows acclaiming Jacopo Tiepolo. To have submitted to the people’s dictation would then have meant a step towards an hereditary monarchy, and the electors paid no attention to the cries from the street. Amongst the candidates was Pietro Gradenigo, a man who, though ambitious, was highly gifted and sincerely devoted to his country, and had always endeavoured to guide the Great Council towards an ideal aristocratic form of government which alone, in his judgment, could save the State from a selfish monarchy on the one hand and a feeble democracy on the other. The electors chose Pietro Gradenigo. [Sidenote: _Rom. i. 344._]