Where was the constitutional monarchy invented?

Answer 1

It could almost be said that it started with Charles I being condemned to death for treason and murder by the parliament in 1649, but such an ending to the office of kingship is not really a beginning. After Cromwell's ten or eleven years of republican experiment and Charles II's restoration to the throne with many parliamentary constraints, a start of constitutional monarchy could be said to be in place. His un-kinglike behavior, though, and the advent of his son, James II, did little to place the king under the thumb of parliament. Not until Charles II's daughter Mary, and her husband William III of Orange, asked to remove James II and his Catholic leanings and love of the French, did England really experience a truly constitutional monarchy. William, being given full monarchial authority by his wife, worked with parliament to adhere to their limitations on his power.

Answer 2

Constitutional monarchy was not invented, it was developed.

In Britain, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 led to a constitutional monarchy restricted by laws such as the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701, although limits on the power of the monarch ('A Limited Monarchy') are much older than that going back to Magna Carta.

Poland established a constitutional monarchy on 3 May 1791, it was the second written constitution on the world after United States, the first in Europe and the first written constitution regulating a monarchy. However, because of the Partitions of Poland, the government it established lasted less than 10 years, after which the Third Partition returned all of Poland to non-constitutional monarchy.

General Napoleon Bonaparte is considered the first monarch proclaiming himself as embodiment of the nation (1804), rather than as a divinely-appointed ruler; this interpretation of monarchy is basic to continental constitutional monarchies.