A deep sorrow had fallen upon him in his domestic relations. His gallant father, the Earl of Rivers, together with his brother, Sir John Woodville, had been beheaded barbarously by the orders of the great Earl of Warwick. His brilliant brother, the Lord Scales, died under the executioner’s sword at the cruel mandate of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, for no other crime than attachment to his nephews and his widowed sister. His two nephews had perished, no man knew how, in the Tower of London; and he himself had been blighted in his affections at an early age. His mother had laboured under the accusation of sorcery and witchcraft--a most dangerous charge in those days. His sister, the lovely Elizabeth Woodville, was mistrusted by the cold and calculating Henry; while his niece, the young and still more beautiful Elizabeth, although consort of the King, was not yet crowned Queen, in spite of having been married more than a year and a half, and having borne an heir to the two rival houses. To relieve his active mind and vigorous frame from these anxieties, the Captain of the Wight welcomed every chance of wielding his sword or plying his lance in the stern excitement of war. At this moment there was going on across the water a contest which had peculiar fascinations for a chivalrous mind. The aged and weak Francis, Duke of Brittany, with his young daughter, the celebrated Anne, the future wife of two kings, and mother of one Queen of France, was now being besieged by the whole force of that kingdom. The English King was repeatedly solicited to bring or send over assistance, and he was strongly tempted to interfere in the quarrel, on the urgent grounds of private gratitude and national policy; but, only just secured on his throne by a victorious battle over a desperate enemy, and well aware how many secret foes he had, Henry VII. was unwilling to draw upon himself the active hostility of France, as well as the perpetual machinations of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy. He therefore listened to the ambassadors of both the contending powers, but publicly refused to interfere by men or money. Many, however, of Henry’s subjects, tired of inaction, and early inured to arms, longed to take part in the struggle, and no one believed that the King would really be sorry if private adventurers undertook what he was prevented from doing ostensibly from reasons of State policy.