A very interesting article by Marsha Bell

How English spelling became so irregular
The first English writing system was developed in the 7th century, after St. Augustine brought Latin to England in 597. The language and spelling have both changed a great deal since then. They did not start to resemble current usage until 1348, when a series of plagues helped to end French domination over England and the English language. The system from which current English spelling conventions have developed was established mainly by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400. Sadly, his orthography began to be diluted almost as soon as he had adopted it. English became re-instated as the official language of England around 1430, but many of the scribes and clerks of court, who had hitherto written only French or Latin, had trouble switching to it. Their difficulties are chiefly responsible for most of the still surviving French spellings in words of French origin (table, double, centre) and spelling inconsistencies, such as ‘label - table’, ‘bubble – double’, ‘enter – centre’. Most words of French descent were respelled to show their changed, anglicised pronunciation (e.g. ‘beef, batter, battle, count, government, mountain’ - from ‘boeuf, battre, bataille, compter, gouvernement, montagne’).Chaucer’s spelling system became even more seriously corrupted after 1476, when Caxton returned to London after residing 30 years on the Continent, to set up the first English printing press. He was assisted by printers who spoke little or no English and made numerous spelling errors (e.g. ‘any, busy, citie’ for ‘eny, bisy, cittie’). They were also paid by the line and fond of lengthening words to earn more money, or to make margins look neater. Many words with earlier simpler spellings became more complex and longer (frend – friend, hed – head, seson – season; bad – badde, shal – shall). The biggest dilution of English spelling patterns, however, occurred in the 16th century, with the first printings of English bibles. They were published abroad, because English bishops supported the Pope’s ban on translating the holy writ from Latin into native languages. After Martin Luther’s public questioning of the Pope’s infallibility in Germany in 1517, many English people became interested in finding out exactly what the bible said, instead of just hearing about it from priests in their Sunday sermons. William Tyndale translated it, but he had to flee England to do so. Tyndale kept moving between Germany, Holland and Belgium, where his writings were also printed and much reprinted, because English bishops, especially Cuthbert Tunstall of London, rounded up thousands for public burning outside St. Paul’s cathedral. With repeated copying, from increasingly corrupt copies, bible spellings became more and more varied. Yet they were the first and only book that many families ever bought. Most learned to read and write from them.When Sir Thomas More’s spies by finally manage to hunt Tyndale down and have him hanged and burnt at the stake near Brussels in 1536, printers began to change his spellings even more, along with his name, in order to disguise his authorship. By the second half of the 16th century English spelling had consequently become very chaotic. Elizabethan manuscripts are full of different spellings for identical words on the same page, even including the Queen’s writings and the first authorised bible of 1611. The spelling disorder created during the first 100 years of English printing led to calls for the standardisation of English spelling. Teachers began to set this in motion by compiling lists of their preferred spellings. Edmond Coote entitled his booklet ‘The English Schoolemaister’ and published it in 1595. It was reprinted 54 times, until 1737. Coote cut many of the surplus letters deliberately inserted by printers (e.g. hadde – had, worde – word), but not all (e.g. have, well, build). Unfortunately, Coote paid little heed to spelling regularity or ease of learning. His main aim was to help establish a single spelling for each word, generally opting for the most often used one. When Samuel Johnson began work on his famous dictionary of 1755, quite a few English words still had more than one spelling, such as ‘ther, there, thare, their’. He decided to link several hundred alternative spellings to differences in meaning, as was already beginning to happen, and thereby helped to make learning to spell English even more difficult. Mercifully, he did not apply this to at least 2000 other word with more than one meaning, such as ‘mean/meane’ or ‘arm/arme’. There are no good reasons for any of the current English spelling irregularities and the learning difficulties which they create.