At the time of Eleanor's birth at Gloucester, King John's London was in the hands of French forces, John had been forced to sign Magna Carta and Queen Isabella was in shame. Eleanor never met her father, as he died at Newark Castle when she was barely a year old. The French, led by Prince Louis the Lion, the future Louis VIII, were marching through the south. The only lands loyal to her brother, King Henry III of England, were in the Midlands and southwest. The barons ruled the north, but they united with the royalists under William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, who protected the young king Henry, and Louis was defeated.