Lorenzo, very soon after his accession to the Headship of the State, “took the bull by the horns” and excluded the Pazzi from participation in public office.  It was an extreme measure and not in accordance with his usual tact and circumspection, and of course it produced the greatest ill-will and resentment against him and his administration in every member of the proscribed family.

The situation became greatly embittered when, in 1477, Lorenzo interfered in a law-suit which concerned the marriage dower and inheritance of Beatrice, the daughter of Giovanni Buonromeo.  By Florentine law the daughter should have inherited the fortune without demur, under the express will of her father, who died intestate; but, at Lorenzo’s command, the estate was passed on to Beatrice’s cousin, Carlo Buonromeo, who was the winner of the second prize in Lorenzo’s Giostra of 1468.  This decision was in direct opposition to Giuliano de’ Medici’s opinion, and he did all he could to reassure Giovanni de’ Pazzi, Guglielmo’s brother, and Beatrice’s husband, of friendship and confidence.

These were not the only incidents which followed one another at the parting of the ways of the two families, but the affair of Giovanni and Beatrice was resented with peculiar bitterness by all the Pazzi.  “Hence arose,” as Francesco de’ Guicciardini has testified, “the wronging of the Pazzi!”

In Francesco, the youngest of the brethren, was exhibited the most violent animosity and hatred.  Blessed with superabundant self-conceit, which went so far as to cause him to spend hours a day having his unusually light-coloured hair dressed at the barber’s and his face salved and puffed at the apothecary’s to conceal his muddy complexion, he was reckoned, in the Mercato Nuovo, as little better than an ill-conditioned braggadoccio!  His shortness of stature he sought to atone for by his accentuation of the Florentine pout and the Tuscan strut—­he was well known, too, for his contemptuous jokes at the expense of others.

Francesco denounced Lorenzo and his Government with unmeasured scorn, and, careless of restraint, threatened that “he would be even with him, even though it cost him his life.”  Macchiavelli says:  “He was the most unscrupulous of his family.”  “A man of blood,” Agnolo Poliziano called him, “who, when he meditated any design, went straight to his goal, regardless of morality, religion, reputation and consequences.”

Early in March he quitted Florence suddenly, giving out that his presence was required at Rome in connection with the affairs of the Pazzi bank.  To say that his departure was a relief to Lorenzo is but half the truth, for he was greatly perturbed with respect to the influence which such a passionate and reckless rival would have upon his relations with the Holy See.  Francesco was the subject of watchfulness upon the part of the Medici agents in Rome, where Giovanni de’ Tornabuoni set himself to thwart any hostile movement which might be made.