How late was it that there was still wide disagreement or variance in spelling? Even when the printing press arrived and dictionaries were published most peopl

How late was it that there was still wide disagreement or variance in spelling? Even when the printing press arrived and dictionaries were published most people who knew how to read/write outside high society, monks, scholars, etc would have used phonetic spellings or whatever spelling was used in their area for a very long time. Spellcheck has done more to freeze spelling than anything since the Dictionary. I don't know if that matters but I do find it interesting. In the past if a prominent newspaper or popular writer decided to spell a word differently it could catch on. Now the spell checker pushes back against such changes.