Hooker on "Edward the Saint" and the Reformation

In his Antidotum Lincolniense (1637), Laudian Peter Heylyn, defending "the Regall power in matters Ecclesiasticall", states of Edward VI, "the judicious divine, M. Hooker calleth Edward the Saint".  I had not previously encountered this reference in Hooker.  It sits in the midst of an account in the Laws of the English Reformation:

When the ruins of the house of God ... were become not in his sight alone, but in the eyes of the whole world so exceeding great, that very superstition began even to feel itself too far grown: the first that with us made way to repair the decays thereof by beheading superstition, was King Henry the Eighth.  The son and successor of which famous King as we know was Edward the Saint: in whom (for so by the event we may gather) it pleased God righteous and just to let England see what a blessing sin and iniquity would not suffer it to enjoy.  Howbeit that which the wise man hath said concerning Enoch ... that same to that admirable child most worthily may be applied, 'Though he departed this world soon, yet fulfilled he much time'.  But what ensued?  That proceeded in, was in short space so overthrown, as if almost it had never been: till such time as that God, whose property is to show his mercies then greatest when they are nearest to be utterly despaired of, caused in the depth of discomfort and darkness a most glorious star to arise, and on her head settled the Crown, whom himself had kept as a lamb from the slaughter of those bloody times ... That which especially concerneth ourselves, in the present matter we treat of, is the state of reformed religion, a thing at her coming to the Crown was raised as it were by miracle from the dead - IV.14.7.

The reference to "Edward the Saint" is, of course, striking.  Also noteworthy is the view of Henry VIII, far removed from the embarrassment concerning Henry amongst most Anglicans today.  And, of course, the description of Elizabeth's accession and the triumph of "reformed religion" is very far from a Stripping of the Altars-inspired view espoused in a variety of contemporary Anglican circles.

It also emphasises the pride avant-garde Conformists and then Laudians took in the English Reformation and those whom Hooker describes as its "principal doers". Any notion - as found in Diarmaid MacCulloch's Tudor Church Militant - that avante-garde and Laudians evinced a "hostility" to the Reformation in general, and to the Edwardine Reformation in particular, is simply unsustainable.  Rather, they invoked the Reformation Settlement - and "Edward the Saint" - against an agitation which sought to undo that Settlement.