So all English speakers spoke with the rhotic accent until the late 18th century. This is where the speaker emphasises the hard "r" sound in words. This is still prevalent in most U.S. accents as well as Canadian Scottish, Irish and in the South West and West Lancashire areas of England - as well as other areas such as Barbados.
The non- rhotic accent is common everywhere else.
This is because in the late 18th century the wealthy wanted to distinguish their accents from the lower classes so they dropped the hard "r" sound from their pronunciation. This occurred predominantly in the south of England. Received pronunciation was born.
There is no point to this - except that one's wife is watching "Jamestown" and Sky haven't paid much attention to how the settlers would have spoken. There was no upper class English accent is then.
So
to Sky
