Lorenzo’s conduct shows that he was fully conscious of the altered position which events had enabled him to assume. Hitherto the Medici had been content to intermarry with Florentine families, and thus to recognise their equality of rank. But Lorenzo, as a prince, must seek a foreign bride, and he married Clarice Orsini, a daughter of the famous family of Roman nobles. Though his own tastes led him to show an interest in art and literature, and to encourage [Sidenote: Constitutional changes.] the amusements of the people, he was also inspired by the wish to establish a court on the lines which had become familiar in the principalities of Italy. In their intercourse with Lorenzo the Florentines showed a deference and even a servility which would have been deemed wholly out of place in the days of Cosimo and Piero. This growth of a monarchical element within the republic is probably the explanation of the numerous and obscure constitutional changes which were made or attempted in the early years of Lorenzo’s administration. Their essential object was to secure absolute control of appointments to the signory. In 1470 it was proposed that the _accoppiatori_ should be chosen every year by a new college of forty-five, consisting of men who had discharged this function since the return of the Medici in 1434. The scheme was denounced as an attempt to subject the city to forty-five tyrants, and failed to pass the council of a hundred. In the next year, however, the same object was attained in a different way. The existing _accoppiatori_ were associated with the sitting members of the signoria as a permanent committee, and the names which they proposed were to be carried in the Hundred by a bare majority, instead of by the usual majority of two-thirds. In the same year the legislative functions of the old councils of the people and of the commune were suspended for ten years. It is difficult to estimate the precise significance of these and other changes, but their general effect was to narrow the circle of families among whose members the more important offices circulated. This was certain to excite dissatisfaction; and among the malcontents we find the Pazzi, an old noble family which had devoted itself to commerce, and now became rivals of the Medici in business as well as in politics.