After the Norman Conquest in 1066, French became the language of the court, government, church, and law in England. Of the numerous French words borrowed into English within the next four centuries, most reflect its status as the language of administration and polite society. French is, for example, the source of many central terms in modern legal vocabulary: dowry, elope, embezzle, endow, jeopardy, jury, lease, mayhem, nuisance, purloin, trial, verdict, waiver, and so on. Other borrowings from French in the medieval period include chronicle, citizen, enhance, exchequer, improve, mariner, noun, packet, perform, pleasant, scourge, several, soil, surgeon, toil, tomb, wager, and wreck. After the political severance of England and Normandy in 1204, the upper classes gradually acquired English. See also note at French²