was no bar to his having the noblest tomb in the world, at S. Lorenzo), the succession should have passed to the other branch of the Medici family, the descendants of old Giovanni’s second son Lorenzo, brother of Cosimo.  But Giulio, at Rome, always at the ear of the indolent, pleasure-loving Leo X, had other projects.  Born in 1478, the illegitimate son of a charming father, Giulio had none of the great Medici traditions, and the Medici name never stood so low as during his period of power.  Himself illegitimate, he was the father of an illegitimate son, Alessandro, for whose advancement he toiled much as Alexander VI had toiled for that of Caesar Borgia.  He had not the black, bold wickedness of Alexander VI, but as Pope Clement VII, which he became in 1523, he was little less admirable.  He was cunning, ambitious, and tyrannical, and during his pontificate he contrived not only to make many powerful enemies and to see both Rome and Florence under siege, but to lose England for the Church.

We move, however, too fast.  The year is 1519 and Lorenzo is dead, and the rightful heir to the Medici wealth and power was to be kept out.  To do this Giulio himself moved to Florence and settled in the Medici palace, and on his return to Rome Cardinal Passerini was installed in the Medici palace in his stead, nominally as the custodian of little Catherine de’ Medici and Ippolito, a boy of ten, the illegitimate son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours.  That Florence should have put up with this Roman control shows us how enfeebled was her once proud spirit.  In 1521 Leo X died, to be succeeded, in spite of all Giulio’s efforts, by Adrian of Utrecht, as Adrian VI, a good, sincere man who, had he lived, might have enormously changed the course not only of Italian but of English history.  He survived, however, for less than two years, and then came Giulio’s chance, and he was elected Pope Clement VII.

Clement’s first duty was to make Florence secure, and he therefore sent his son Alessandro, then about thirteen, to join the others at the Medici palace, which thus now contained a resident cardinal, watchful of Medici interests; a legitimate daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino (but owing to quarrels she was removed to a convent); an illegitimate son of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, the nominal heir and already a member of the Government; and the Pope’s illegitimate son, of whose origin, however, nothing was said, although it was implied that Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours, was his father.

This was the state of affairs during Clement’s war with the Emperor Charles V, [2] which ended with the siege of Rome and the imprisonment of the Pope in the Castle of S. Angelo for some months until he contrived to escape to Orvieto; and meanwhile Florence, realizing his powerlessness, uttered a decree again banishing the Medici family, and in 1527 they were sent forth from the city for the third time.  But even now, when the move was so safe, Florence lacked courage to carry it out until a member of the Medici family, furious at the presence of the base-born Medici in the palace, and a professed hater of her base-born uncle Clement VII and all his ways—­Clarice Strozzi, nee Clarice de’ Medici, granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent—­came herself to this house and drove the usurpers from it with her extremely capable tongue.