The other day I came across an interesting article about the causes of English spelling being so inconsistent. The author argues that this can't be explained by English being a mixture of Germanic, Romance and other influences: the same or similar is true about other European languages, which however have more or less consistent - if sometimes fairly complicated - sets of spelling rules.
Instead, she claims that the timing of the introduction of printing is to blame. According to her, printing came to England after old spelling traditions had been eroded by the literate elite using primarily Latin. With the nascent return of the vernacular new traditions still had to become established, and various people in the meantime used various spellings for the same words depending on which dialect they spoke. Which was exacerbated by the concurrent Great Vowel Shift. Now with printing meaning that many more than before had a reason to learn to read, then write, then pass their own usage on to others (and in the absence of an institution like the Académie Française), the new traditions developed in a rather haphazard way. In other words, before a literate elite could establish new rules, it stopped being exclusive and the rules established themselves - any old how. Too many cooks spoil the broth, so to say.
Of course, I'm no linguist. I have no way of knowing whether printing (rather than, say, the Great Vowel Shift) really was the main factor. But it does seem quite plausible that it played a significant role.
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