I found the following interesting and quite 'revealing.'
From Napoleon and the British by Stuart Semmel, xiii, A Note on Spelling and Punctuation:
'Unless otherwise indicated, italics in quotations are original to the sources. Spelling mistakes and typographical errors in quotations have generally been preserved and indicated. Certain spellings that depart from twenty-first century British practice, and which might appear to be the work of an American transcriber-for example, 'honor' and 'center'- were in fact the spellings employed by late Hanoverians, before a desire to Frenchify British spelling exerted itself later in the nineteenth century. In this sense…modern American usage remains closer than modern British usage to 'the king's English'-if the king in question is George III.'
Now isn't that both revealing and a surprise. So, modern British spelling is apparently French-inspired. 😀
@Kevin F. Kiley certainly not a surprise to me. I’d understood that we British had gifted the English language in it’s then form to the colonies. Of course a great deal of upper class English is French, courtesy of Norman French being the medieval courtly language. The Anglo-Saxon therefore became debased. Pork (porc) describes the meat, Swineherders look after the animal husbandry.. this has led to perfectly normal Anglo-Saxon becoming some of our most disliked (and beloved!) four letter swear words. This has a resonance in our period, Col Hake of Cumberland Hussars fame have his bridle seized and being “addressed in words of plain Saxon”.