Text 94: Caxton's The Historye of Reynart the Foxe, 1489 version

Our modern translation

How the lion, king of all beasts, sents out his commands
that all beasts should come to his feast and court.

Chapter I

It was about the time of Pentecost or Whitsuntide
that the woods commonly are lusty and glasome,
the trees clothes with leaves and blossoms and the ground with
herbs and flowers that smell sweet and also the fowls and birds
sing melodiously in harmony. Then the lion,
the noble king of all beasts, would in the holy days of this
feast hold an open court at Standen, which he did to know
all over his land. And he commanded, by straight commissions
and commands, that every beast should comes thither
in such wise that all beasts great and small came
to the court except Reynard the fox, because he knew himself
faulty and guilty of many things against many beasts
that thither should come. And he did not dare to go
thither when the king of all beasts had assembled all
his court. There was none of them. But he had sorely
complained of Reynard the fox.
Isegrym the wolf made the first complaint of Reynard.

Chapter II

Isegrym the wolf with his lineage and friends came
and stood before the king. And he said high and mighty:
prince, my lord, the king, I beseech you that through your
great might, right and mercy that you will have pity on the
great offence and the unreasonable misdeeds that Reynard
the fox has done to me and my wife, that is to say, he is
come into my house against the will of my wife. And
there he has pissed on my children where as they lay in
such wise as they thereof are blind women, whereupon was...