 Since the 1950s, academic assessment of the Earl of Leicester has undergone considerable changes. Leicester's importance in literary patronage was established by Eleanor Rosenberg in 1955. Elizabethan Puritanism has been thoroughly reassessed since the 1960s, and Patrick Collinson has outlined the Earl's place in it. Dudley's religion could thus be better understood, rather than simply to brand him as a hypocrite. His importance as a privy councillor and statesman has often been overlooked, one reason being that many of his letters are scattered among private collections and not easily accessible in print, as are those of his colleagues Walsingham and Cecil. Alan Haynes describes him as "one of the most strangely underrated of Elizabeth's circle of close advisers", while Simon Adams, who since the early 1970s has researched many aspects of Leicester's life and career, concludes: "Leicester was as central a figure to the' first reign ' [of Elizabeth] as Burghley."
