England during the Crusades
Henry III (1216-1272)
Henry III was not a very good king. He tried, but somehow he managed either to be ineffective or unpopular, or both. He was the first English king to be a child when he came to power, and that gave plenty of opportunity for various powerful barons to become entrenched. It would have taken a strong king to dislodge them, and Henry was not a strong king.
Henry struggled for years to assert his authority, as various guardians jockeyed for power. He was sixteen before he was allowed to use his personal seal on documents, and then only because he'd appealed to Pope Honorius III for support. He had to get a letter from Pope Gregory IX declaring his minority at an end before he was able to face down all of his "guardians." He was twenty years old at the time.
Henry was every bit as unsuccessful as his father was, and paid for it in much the same fashion. His invasion of Brittany in 1230 failed, and so did his invasion of Poitou in 1242. As John had done, Henry governed largely on his own authority with selected advisors, without consulting the barons. As his father had done, Henry feuded with the papacy.
His failures came to a head in 1258, when the barons, led by the Earls of Gloucester and Norfolk, forced Henry to sign the Provisions of Oxford. By these Provisions, Henry was required to govern in consultation with a council of fifteen barons, who would have authority over the judicial system. These fifteen would meet three times a year with twelve other barons in a Parliament. A real Parliament was decades away yet, but the Provisions of Oxford form an important precedent.
The Provisions demonstrated not so much that Henry was weak as that there were limits on how far a king of England could go in ruling on his own. The barons, predictably, overplayed their hand and the king was soon able to ignore many of the Provisions. There was one more baronial revolt, led by Simon de Montfort, but Henry was unlike his father for once: he was victorious in the field (Battle of Evesham, 1267) and ended the rebellion by force. As part of the settlement later that same year, Henry confirmed his adherence to the Magna Carta. He was able to spend his last few years in relative peace.
Henry and the Crusades
Henry III did not go on crusade, but he took the crusading vow in 1250. He bought his way out of it by putting forward his son Edmund as a candidate to become King of Sicily, all part of an elaborate papal scheme to pry the Hohenstaufen out of southern Italy. That plan was an expensive failure, and then Edmund died. But his second son, Edward, took the crusading vow and actually went to the Holy Land in 1270, where he managed to do some good despite a diminutive army.
Both John and Henry were utterly preoccupied with affairs in France and, closely related, with their own internal troubles. Both took crusading vows with the clear understanding that they would go only when things at home had settled down. Things never settled down long enough for them to undertake their own crusade.
Many English knights went to the Holy Land on their own, though. The Templars had a large presence in the kingdom. But England as a nation was both unwilling and unable to come to the aid of Outremer during the reigns of John and Henry.