CHAPTER 3. THE PURITAN COLONISTS In all the published historical records on the colony, the British colonization begins at Belize. This is not true. It is due to insufficient research and the tendency to facile expla- nation. There are no Spanish geographic names between Monkey River and Belize. Because of this I decided to search the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century records on insular and mainland Caribbean history in the rare-books' sections of several of the great libraries of Europe. Works in Dutch, English, French, German, Latin, and Spanish were perused. My views expressed in these pages have been tem- pered in that light, but I have used only such as have a bear- ing on my subject. In the Calendar of State Papers, 1574-1660, colonial series, published in 1860 from the records of Warwick House and Brook House, there are over two dozen names of officials, vessels, religious beliefs, and agricultural interests of the Puritans who colonized the central coastal area of this colony as an extension of their activities on Old Providence or Santa Catalina. On December 4, 1630 there was formed in London a com- pany authorized by Charles I, "whereby Robert Earl of War- wick was made Governor in Chief and Lord High Admirall of all those islands and other plantations, inhabited, planted, or belonging to any his Majesties the King of Englands subjects, within the bounds and upon the coast of America. And a committee appointed to be assisting unto him for the better 33