> To put it another way how do you know they were silent letters,

Because the same person often wrote down the same word using different 
spellings, and if you assume he pronounced them the same way, that seems to 
indicate there could have been silent letters in use long before the 
printing press.  How do you know there weren't any silent letters? :-)

> Words such as knife might  have entered as the standard spelling because 
> the k was still pronounced  at the time.

Or probably in one region it was spoken "nife" and in another "k-nife".  If 
the printer was from the "k-nife" region he would choose to write it 
"knife", but then the "nife" pronunciation spread and we have the situation 
today.

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