Which flavor of English (British vs. American) first had standard modern spellings?

Which flavor, British English or American English, first standardised its modern spellings?

I'm mostly interested in the direction of alteration; for example, was the u dropped from colour or was the u added to color? I'm interested in a general answer rather than an answer to this specific example, though.

The history of dictionary releases seems to indicate that British was standardised first:

• British, 1604: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Alphabeticall (perhaps too Olde English?)
  
• British, 1755: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language
  
• American, 1828: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Dictionary

However, I'm not certain that any of those three dictionaries represents a modern enough standard to be considered the first real standard of English for either dialect.

Clearly both languages have evolved since their initial standardisation, but which set of spellings was standardised first?

Edit: To clarify, I'm interested in the chronology rather than repute or popularity. Which dialect had its modern (by which I mean contemporary, present-day) spellings published or released in a dictionary first?

I don’t agree with what others have said about there being no standardisation of English spelling. When Caxton decided to print in the south-east Midlands dialect in the second half of the fifteenth century he began a process which led ultimately to Standard English as we know it today. Its first major codification, including its spelling, came with the publication in 1928, after more than 40 years work, of ‘A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles’. That in turn led to the Oxford English Dictionary, still the reference of last resort for information about all aspects of English words. It is based on the way the language is and has been used, and its definitions, as well as its spellings, are supported by numerous citations.

Standardisation of the language in the United States seems to have begun almost as soon of the first settlers arrived and American English today seems to be more rule-driven than British English. American spelling bees are just one example of a characteristic striving for linguistic uniformity. Noah Webster wanted to create a separate linguistic identity for the United States and it is his almost singlehanded effort, evident in the dictionaries he published in the first half of the nineteenth century, that is responsible for the American spelling we know today.

Spelling is now more regular than it has ever been, to the extent that an errant spelling is almost on a level with a sin against the Holy Ghost. That would have been inconceivable in earlier times. Some words, it is true, have variant spellings, but they are small in number. None of this is to say that spelling will change in the future, but the pressure for homogeneity is unlikely to weaken.

Neither of them has ever been standardised.

Once dictionaries and other manuals began to appear, many people (in particular, educators) treated the dictionaries as authorities.

Having said that, I suspect that Webster's prestige, coupled with his deliberate appeal to patriotism, made his authority more pervasive in the US than anything in Britain. I haven't checked this out, though.

As Colin said, neither of them has been standardised.

Having said that. I don't believe Johnson's dictionary was an attempt to standardise spelling so much as to establish usage and citation as the model of deciding how a word was used.

Webster definitely had an agenda of standardising, and regularising spelling - so you could argue his was the first, and only attempt.

(damn American spell checker keeps trying to put 'z' everywhere!)