48 The Beginning of British Honduras
 There were many discontented Puritans in New England
who planned to emigrate to Cape Gratia de Dios, a name
though in three languages ranked with Providence and Eleu-
thera. In 1640 John Humphrey,.."a gentleman of special
parts of learning and activity and a Godly man," was ap-
pointed governor of Providence and Cape Gratia de Dios in
Mosquitia, and took with him many who had sold their
estates in New England, and it was "left to his own discretion
to pursue any designs upon Cape Gratia de Dios." We read
of other groups of dissentient Puritans who came at this time
to this area, and it was then that one group colonized the area
where they left the names Seven Hills, after the seven hills on
which the Puritans built Providence, Rhode Island, Golden
Stream, Hope Creek, Middle River, and South Monkey River
or Deep River. The Spanish seizure of Providence in 1641
had caused several shiploads of colonists to deviate to the
Cockscomb Cobast. In the Journal of Governor Winthrop of
Massachusetts we read of the wanderings of the Puritans in
their efforts to find a resting place for their church and com-
munity. In October 1635 Roger Williams was banished from
Salem on a religious dispute, and he founded Providence,
Rhode Island, in June 1636. He was the founder of the
Baptist Church of America, and it is because of these Puri-
tan settlements that the Baptist Church is by far the oldest
Protestant religious denomination in British Honduras. Cap-
tain W. A. Blewfield was a link between Roger Williams
and the Puritan settlers of the Cockscomb area of Cape Gratia
de Dios.
 It was their aim to make Bermuda or the Somers Isles a
Puritan sanctuary, and in 1648 the Reverend Patrick Cope-
land and Mr. Goldinge, and others were banished in a reli-
gious dispute from Bermuda and they went with their former
governor Captain William Sayle to his new plantation on
the rocky island they called "Eleuthera" in the Bahamas, for
which he secured his patent in 1646. They also built Charles-
town, near the old Dutch Fort Nassau, on New Providence