The crusades would have certainly been known of in England from 1240-60. Almost 150 years after the First Crusade, the crusading ideal had become embedded in English society. Crusading was actively promoted with each campaign being preached in church and the market square. In 1235, the friars undertook their first crusade preaching campaign in England. The mendicant orders would become a mainstay of future crusade preaching. These preaching campaigns both called for participants and for donations to each expedition.

There were two major English crusade expeditions in this period. From 1240-1, Richard of Cornwall, Henry III's brother, led a crusade to the Levant, along with two semi-independent expeditions led by Simon de Montfort, the future baronial rebel, and William of Forz. The second large campaign was in 1250, when William Longsword, a veteran of Richard of Cornwall's expedition, joined the Seventh Crusade. He was killed at the battle of Mansourah.

Crusading had also developed political uses in England. Henry II, Richard I, and John had all taken the cross, a ceremony which granted crusader status and made a promise to go on crusade. Only Richard ever went to the East but the other two kings did use this status for political gain and protection at home, as crusaders were under the protection of the Church. Henry III swore a crusade vow in 1250, but also never went to the East. In 1217 Henry III's royalists took the cross, applying the status of a crusade to their fight against Prince Louis of France and the rebellious English barons. This politicalised crusading was to be repeated by Simon de Montfort in his fight against Henry III, de Montfort taking the cross against the king in 1263. De Montfort's supporters wore crosses at the battle of Lewes (1264) and both sides did so at Evesham (1265). Urban IV and Clement IV even proclaimed Henry III's fight against the rebels a crusade.

Crusading was clearly known about in England in this period with chroniclers such as Matthew Paris writing about Richard of Cornwall's crusade. However, monastic chronicles would not have been read by the average Englishman, but such people would have heard about these campaigns from other sources. The military orders present in England, the Templars, Hospitallers, Lazarites, and St Thomas Knights, would have publicly preached their role in defending the crusader states. The Hospitallers, and probably the other three orders, were also entitled to visit parish churches once a year to recount their campaigns in the East and ask for donations. The 'average' Englishman would have been regularly reminded of the fight in the Levant, whether by a Hospitaller clerk visiting their church or a Dominican friar preaching in the marketplace.

However, it is difficult to know exactly how much detail the 'average' Englishman would have known about the crusades in this period. There are less than thrity surviving manuscript crusade sermons, and only one, composed by Roger of Salisbury, bishop of Bath and Wells (died 1247), came from an English author of this period. The entirety of this sermon is an imagined scene with Christ and his apostles. There is no information given about the thirteenth-century Levant. An anonymous crusade sermon, called the Elstow Sermon, was given to the nuns of Elstow, Bedfordshire, in 1283. It also contains no actual specifics about the situation in the East or historical crusading, being a collection of exhortations and Biblical quotes. No crusade sermons of the military orders survive from this period, but late medieval Hospitaller ones are very vague in their description, stating that the Order holds Rhodes against Turk and Saracen attack, but without elaboration or specifics. It is likely the sermons of the military orders and newsletters from campaigns like Richard of Cornwall's that provided most of the average Englishman's knowledge about the East. Such a person would have been aware of the conflict between the crusader states and the Levant's Islamic powers, but it is unlikely that they knew the details, such as the internal politics of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, or who the more minor Muslim leaders were.

It is even more difficult to ascertain this group's opinions of crusading. There was some criticism of crusading or the crusading movement. Ralph Niger (d. 1217) had criticised the Third Crusade and in 1267 at a crusade council in Bury St Edmunds, the papal legate's suggestion that preaching be sped up was rejected with claims that too many men leaving on crusade would make England vulnerable to attack. However, this criticism often did not stem from 'average' Englishmen, but from educated churchmen. The nobility and knights demonstrated a continued enthusiasm for crusading, participating in Richard of Cornwall's and William Longsword's expeditions in this period. Crusade preaching raised significant funds and this expression of support for the crusade may be the most relevant in this case. One didn't need to be wealthy or literate to donate to an expedition and so the 'average' Englishman's contribution may best be found here. One way that preaching campaigns raised funds was by prompting the swearing of crusade vows. These crusaders could then have their vow commuted, buying their way out of having to go to the East. The money for this could then be granted by the Pope to a crusade expedition. In 1247 one archdeaconry raised £600 from such redemptions. When William Longsword took the cross again in 1247, he was awarded 2000 marks (about £1333). It is difficult to be at all certain, but based on these sums, it is likely that the 'average' Englishman was generally supportive of crusading, though probably not enough to actually go to the East and there were many reasons to be reluctant to do so. Expeditions were risky and expensive. Unless an 'average' Englishman was travelling as part of a noble's retinue, it is unlikely that he could have afforded to go himself.

Sources:

Penny J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095-1270 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991).

Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095-1588 (Chicago, 1988).