Who invented the constitutional monarchy?

Answer 1

Answer improvement 27.09.2009

Poland, has established first constitutional monarchy in the world on 3rd may 1791, it was second constitution on thw world after United States, fist in Europe and the first constitution regulating the monarchy.

Constitutional Monarchy was invented by Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth.

Old Answer

No-one really invented it. The basic idea of constitutional monarchy, that the sovereign should rule according to law, and that no laws or taxes should be made without the consent of the nation's representatives has always been present in monarchial states. Thus even in tribal Germany in the early Roman Empire, Tacitus records that the hereditary Kings only had sovereign and executive power, legislative power could only be exercised with the Chiefs and People, as the representatives of the whole nation according to the social order. This principle derives from natural law acknowledged by all peoples, that individuals have a right to liberty and property, and thus the sovereign authority, whether it be monarchial or republican, could only take these rights away by consent. Europe developed primitive constitutional monarchy in the Middle Ages as Christianity gave explicit moral force to these laws of nature, and the Catholic Church defined them as dogma. Thus in all European countries, customary representative bodies sprang up and there existed a monarchy governing under law. The transition from primitive constitutional to parliamentary constitutional monarchy was necessitated by modernisation of states, as this entailed increased costs which legally required the consent of representatives. The transition can be attributed to the efforts of certain groups and individuals, as in some countries e.g. France, the monarchy used legal fictions to modernise under an absolutist system, whereas in England men like Sir Edward Coke, the Seven Bishops and the Immortal Seven at the Glorious Revolution ensured that the monarchy modernise the country legally, which meant through a government possessing the confidence of Parliament. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 achieved this, the men who accomplished it (Danby, Halifax, Somers, William of Orange etc.) are responsible for the development of parliamentary constitutional monarchy in England, which subsequently gave it to the discredit absolutist monarchies of Europe if they survived.