How did the Protestant Reformation affect the competition among European powers in the colonization of the Americas?

The Portuguese and Spanish colonies were eminently Catholic because the metropolises were Catholic (Spain was the most conservative and reactionary bastion of Catholicism in Europe, the craddle of Counterreformation), and Reformation and Protestants were fought and excluded in the 16th century. Meanwhile, most English settlers in the New World were believers of the Protestant faith and many of them had left England for religious purposes; their versions of Protestantism were stricter than the official practice of the Anglican Church.