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The background to the conflict can be found 400 years earlier, in 911, when Frankish Carolingian ruler Charles the Simple allowed the Vikings of Rollo to settle in a part of his kingdom known afterwards as "Normandy". The Vikings, known as Normans and led by William the Conqueror (the Duke of Normandy), conquered England in 1066. They defeated the Anglo-Saxon leadership and installed a new Anglo-Norman power structure. William took the English throne as King of England. The Anglo-Normans at the height of their power during the 11th Century controlled Normandy, England, along with Maine, Anjou, Touraine and Aquitaine. However, in 1216, the Anglo-Normans lost most of their continental possessions to France, leaving a situation in which most of the English nobles in the 14th century were recent descendants of the Anglo-Normans, who still spoke a version of French, and could remember a time when their grandparents had ruled Normandy. The nobles had never fully given up the dream of one day reconquering their homeland in Normandy; it was a very rich land, and England stood to become very wealthy by retaking it. The war was both a "national" desire to re-take a former kingdom, and personal desires on the part of the nobility to gain wealth and increased prestige