How did the English develop limits on Absolutism?
Like the two answers before me said, it started with the Magna Carta. However, the concept of an absolute monarch the way we think of it now didn’t really develop until the 16th century. Remember, before then, England was still Catholic, and as such owed allegiance to the Church. A big part of absolutism comes from the “divine right” of kings – God chooses the kings, therefore anything they do is God’s will, therefore they can do ANYTHING they want. Hard to reconcile with the idea of the Pope as the extreme religious authority. If the king says do X, and the Pope says absolutely DO NOT do X, who do you believe? Do you go with treason, or blasphemy? But when Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, he freed the English monarchy from the fetters of a higher authority (the Church’s power had been waning ever since the Reformation anyway). It was then that both absolutism as we think of it and absolutism as a political philosophy were born. Elizabeth and her father both considered themse
