The Anglo-Saxon, English, or Baymen's settlement of Belize is traditionally thought to have been effected upon Peter Wallace's 1638 landing at the mouth of Haulover Creek.

As this account lacks clear primary sources, however, scholarly discourse has tended to qualify, amend, or completely eschew said theory, giving rise to a myriad competing narratives of the English settling of Belize.

Though none of the aforementioned have garnered widespread consensus, historical literature has tended to favour a circumspect account of a landing near Haulover sometime during the 1630s and 1660s, effected by logwood-seeking, haven-seeking, or shipwrecked buccaneers.

The earliest of these is thought to have been either Sir Francis Drake in the Minion, or John Oxenham in the Beare, who during 23 February 1573 – 22 March 1573 cruised the Bay and watered at Guanaxa.

[citation needed] Notably, during October 1577 – April 1578, an English pirate or privateer, called Francisco de Acles by the Spanish, with 60 men aboard two ships, sacked Puerto Caballos and Bacalar, possibly marking the earliest entrance of such sea dogs into Bacalar's [ie present-day Belize's] waters.

[7][8][9] It is commonly thought that, upon the 1570s discovery of the intricate, secluded reefs, cayes, and coastline which characterised the waters of Bacalar, English buccaneers promptly opted to base their operations in this portion of the Bay, it affording them safe haven and quick access to Spanish ports.

Prior to 1630, Spanish smuggling with Anglo-Dutch pirate-merchants at ports in the Bay of Honduras is thought to have 'amounted to little more than evasion of duties and taxes,' with typical cases described as 'not spectacular.

So Central American merchants and indigo plantation owners in the middle years of the seventeenth century found themselves with a fairly viable export crop, [...] and few means of disposing of it.

[15][16][17][18] The earliest logwood cutting near the Bay of Honduras is commonly dated to 1562, and attributed to the Spanish conquistador Marcos de Ayala Trujeque of Valladolid, Yucatan.

[20] During this same decade, English pirates, privateers, or buccaneers are thought to have first recognised the commercial value of logwood, and consequently, to have increasingly sought it as prize.

This is in contrast to the more regularly established British colonies in the region, which were acquired either by royal patents or by conquest and settlement.All Caribbean countries, with one exception, can document the date of first permanent settlement by Europeans with some accuracy.

[citation needed][note 7] A variety of competing accounts have been proffered since the 18th century, none of which have gained widespread scholarly favour.

[citation needed] Despite this, most scholarly accounts seem to favour a second- or third-quarter-of-the-17th century date, with responsibility attributed to pirate's-haven-seeking, logwood-seeking, or shipwrecked buccaneers.

Here they built a great many Houses and Hutts, and employ'd Multitudes of Negroes in cutting Logwood, which was transported to Jamaica and Europe by Numbers of Vessels trading from thence to the Bay.THE PURITAN COLONISTS.

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.

[...] On December 4, 1630 there was formed in London a company authorized by Charles I, "whereby Robert Earl of Warwick was made Governor in Chief and Lord High Admirall of all those islands and other plantations, inhabited, planted, or belonging to any of his Majesties the King of Englands subjects, within the bounds and upon the coast of America [...]" [In the Calendar of State Papers, 1574-1660, colonial series, published in 1860].

[...] in May and July 1633 Captain Sussex Camock was appointed director of a trade at Capt Gratia de Dios, with Edward Williams and Nath.

374–3751638.----This year a few British subjects first inhabited Honduras, having been wrecked on the Coast.Wallice [was a] Lieutenant among the Bucaniers who formerly infested these seas......he first discovered the mouth of the River Belize [in 1638].—Ungewitter & Hopf 1872, p. 693The British Settlement of Honduras, of which Belize is the capital, cannot be traced to be of any greater antiquity than from the administration of Oliver Cromwell, in Great Britain, at which period it was, from its remote and secret situation, used by the English, rather as a place of refuge and concealment, from the dreadful and savage warfare then carried on by the Spaniards [...] .We can be fairly certain that there was no permanent British presence in Belize before 1642 and the reasons for this are straightforward.

Meanwhile, Captain William Jackson [...] had sacked Trujillo with exceptional ferocity in 1642 and rendered its fortifications unuseable for a number of years, so that the Spanish could no longer defend the Bay of Honduras from the south either.

[T]he archaeological investigations that are the focus of the present work provide no corroborating evidence for theories of semi-permanent English settlement during the first half of the seventeenth century.

[...] The Belize settlement received regular introductions of new European populations from the early 1680s on, such as the mutinous crew of Captain Coxon, who were sent there to evacuate the logwood cutters [...].

One of the first objects that tempted the English, was the great profit arising from the logwood trade, and the facility of wresting some portion of it from the Spaniards.

Some adventurers from Jamaica made the first attempt at Cape Catoche, the south-east promontory of Yucatan, and by cutting logwood there, carried on a gainful traffic.

The Spaniards, alarmed at this encroachment, endeavoured by negociaiton, remonstrances, and open force, to prevent the English from obtaining any footing on that part of the American continent.

But after struggling against it for more than a century, the disasters of last war extorted from the court of Madrid a reluctant consent to tolerate this settlement of foreigners in the heart of its territories.—González Díaz & Lázaro de la Escosura 2010, p. 167—Calderón Quijano 1944, pp.