¹ The Gouda version is the basis for Caxton’s Middle English work.
² Pentecost was  a time when the Imperial Diets were held and  all sorts of festivities connected with courtly life took place.
³ Häher:  jay; Markward suggests someone who patrols a border
⁴ «Ermenrich» is the historical Ermanarich, king of the Ostrogoths, whose kingdom collapsed under the onslaught of the Huns in 375.
⁵ Instead of swearing on the Bible they swear an oath on the badger’s head, a travesty of judicial practices.
⁶ Charlemagne’s favorite residence.  The coronation of the German kings used to take place at the cathedral of Aachen since the Carolingian days.
⁷ i.e. use the treasure for bribery and blackmail
⁸ She swore by the relics of the Three Wise Men whose shrine is at Cologne Cathedral.
⁹ whatever annoyed and enraged him
¹⁰ The fact that it is the queen who speaks and not the king shows her in control and adds to the carricature of Nobel whom the author intended to represent the establishment.
¹¹ Kleiderstoff, see l. 4038, p. 521.
¹² This is clearly a reference to one of the most serious «Gravamina» of the fifteenth century, that is, the Peter’s pence, which was originally only an annual feudal tax paid by England in recognition of the pope’s assumed function as the supreme feudal lord.
¹³ Papal envoys, abbots, provosts, and other prelates
¹⁴ Beginen:  Beguins, members of lay sisterhoods who had not taken final vows and were not attached to any convent;  their name is indicative of the type of bonnet they wore
¹⁵ Simon:  an allusion to the practice of simony, the buying or selling of sacred or spiritual things, such as ecclesiastical offices.  This had been a problem as far back as the infant church and one of the major issues of the Cluniac Reform Movement of the tenth and eleventh centuries which, originating from the Benedictine abbey of Cluny,  ultimately laid the foundation for a powerful  medieval papacy.
¹⁶ The names enumerated here reflect on particular vices found among the curial clergy, such as «Schalkefund» (‘one who devises clever, criminal ways’), «Greifzu» (‘one who helps himself first’), «Lösungsfund» (‘one who is never at a loss for convenient solutions’) and "Mantelwender" (‘one who trims his sails to the wind,’ a parasite), or "Nimmersatt" (l. 4197) and «Krümmsrecht» (l. 4207), which are self-explanatory.
¹⁷ Pope Innocent VIII (d.1492) whose notorious decree of 1484 unleased the fury of the Church against witchcraft.
¹⁸ The secretary is named "Partei" for his apparent partiality which, of course, is helped by proper donations.
¹⁹ «Horchgenau» (informer, spy) is the most influential courtier at the curia.
²⁰ ein Bakkalaureus der Rechte:  «Krümmsrecht» (probably referring to the notary’s fraudulent activities) is equally versed in canon and civil law.  He is flanked by two judges whose names refer to ‘money’, i.e.  ‘corruptness’ and whose sentences cannot be appealed.
²¹ uroscopy («Harnbeschau») for the diagnosis of disease.
²² The reference here is to a magic mirror of which Reinke had told earlier.
²³ under penalty of death
²⁴ It would be interesting to speculate about who added this sentence:  the original author, perhaps out of a sense of moral rectitude, or the printer, who would have been interested in more mundane rewards.