It depends where it was in the country. Even now, after fast travel, radio, television etc, you can still get completely different vowels within 100 miles.
If I took the word “road” and travelled 100 miles either North/South/East/West, I could find it pronounced (as it would sound to me) as reud, raad, rird or roud.
Yeah but what vowel set were they using in ye olde timesy shoppe? The Great Vowel Movement (previously known as the Great Vowel Shift) changed things.
It depends where it was in the country. Even now, after fast travel, radio, television etc, you can still get completely different vowels within 100 miles.
If I took the word “road” and travelled 100 miles either North/South/East/West, I could find it pronounced (as it would sound to me) as reud, raad, rird or roud.