ABSTRACT
In his book, England and the Crusades, Christopher Tyerman suggested that, 'the spread of pious and charitable grants to the new, specifically crusading orders and others associated with the Holy Land confirms a general interest in the crusade and Outremer'. 1 Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that, with the growth of interest in the crusades in England, crusading orders might expect to receive patronage from people who either physically participated in expeditions to the Holy Land or who were simply influenced by events in that area. Support for this view comes from Janet Burton's study of the Yorkshire Templars in which she shows that the increase in the foundation of Templar preceptories in the county coincided with the Second and Third Crusades. 2 It is the aim of this paper to consider the hypothesis that the crusades acted as a stimulus to the patronage of crusading orders, using evidence from the patronage of the Order of St Lazarus which settled in England in the twelfth century.
