There has been a long and storied history of spelling reform. Some of the reforms caught on in some countries but not in others. That is why spellings differ between the U.S.A. and Great Britain, not due to some retention of Elizabethan spellings.

English has horrible spelling. Nobody, but nobody can justify "through." Noah Webster made valiant efforts at reform, almost all of which failed. Ben Johnson, Ben Franklin, Issac Asimov and countless others have made attempts at regularizing this miscegenated, misbegotten language. Read up. It's a whole arena of history of which you were probably unaware.

History of English spelling reform