I would like to caution against a view of English history as a constant struggle between king and Parliament. Though parts of the 17th century can be seen in this light, it is not the case for the period that went before this.
Instead, royal and popular power grew in tandem, a fact even an autocratic king like Henry VIII realised when, in 1542, he said:
We be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic...
Through the use of parliament, the crown was able to raise revenues more efficiently than any other power in Europe. The people, in return, received redress for grievances, and a voice in national affairs. It was not a zero-sum game; everyone benefited from it.
Sources:
John Maddicott: The Origins of the English Parliament, 924-1327
G.L. Harris: King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369
This is a question that historians have spent entire careers attempting to answer, and its one of those where if you asked 10 different historians, you'd probably get 10 different answers. However, I will attempt to give mine.
For my money, in order to understand the tensions of the 17th century British Isles, you have to consider both England and Scotland. The English crown and Parliament cannot be considered in isolation, and I would argue that it represents one facet of the changing relationship between the Stuart monarchy and other forms of political power.
As you will no doubt be aware, Scotland and England were first joined in personal union under James in 1603. The interesting part of this is that despite James' personal inclination towards absolute monarchy, Scotland had, since the Scottish reformation, largely subscribed to John Knox and George Buchanan's conditional interpretation of monarchy.
Though England and Scotland both underwent reformations in the mid 16th century, they were very different. The English one was sparked off on the basis of Henry's belief in an English 'empire' with no higher authority than himself, and pursued during his and Edward's reign largely by the King and his close advisers. In Scotland however, the Reformation was largely imposed upon the crown by the nobility inspired by the religious and political theories of Knox and Buchanan, who formulated theories of just resistance whereby the crown derived conditional authority from their role in maintaining the true religion.
This would become a huge issue when Charles attempted to impose English-style prayer books on Scotland. For believers in Buchananite conceptions of monarchy, this was an act that justified resistance. This led to the Scottish crisis and the Bishop's wars, which I would argue were important not just as they required Charles to call parliament to deal with them, but because of the unprecedented Covenanter campaign of propaganda that meant that their ideas of conditional resistance were propagated throughout England as well.
The subsequent civil wars and Cromwell's campaign against the Covenanters demonstrated two things, firstly that the power of Parliament and the estates could defeat the King, and secondly that an English army could invade and occupy Scotland. This meant that all parties during the Restoration were often acutely aware of the need to proceed in a cautious, negotiated fashion, as neither the King nor the Scots could rely on resorting to violence as they attempted to do in the 1640s.
The Scots had always sought the Restoration of Charles II, they crowned him King in 1650, which is what led to Cromwell invading them. The conditional Covenanter conception of the monarchy justified resistance, but they also had an end of the bargain to hold up, which is that the King was still the King so long as he abided by Godly terms (represented in the Solemn League and Covenant, which Charles II signed).
In England, it is important to note that the Restoration was not a triumph of royalty over Parliament, but of royalist parliamentarians over republican. Republicanism was never all that strong in England, and even less so in Scotland. Even Cromwell was uneasy about the idea of killing Charles, but ultimately it was thought a necessary last resort, and Cromwell was able to defend the subsequently created Commonwealth by force of arms. The Restoration, by all accounts, was a genuinely popular event.
However, Charles II's regime was never quite able to come to terms with the basket case of political and religious issues inherited from the Civil wars period. Charles had promised religious freedom in the declaration of Breda in 1650, but the very parliamentarians who had restored him did so in no small part due to a belief in the pacifying political effect of a strong King and a unified Anglican church, which they hoped he would bring with him. Thus a back and forth ensued of Charles attempting to please everyone, and often not really pleasing anyone, issuing several declarations of religious toleration that often didn't get very far.
Many Protestants worried about Charles' sympathy for Catholicism, and feared indulgence for religious dissenters was a pathway to inclusion of Catholics in public life. Nor would toleration satisfy many Scottish Presbyterians, who wanted an established Presbyterian church, with many more radical Presbyterians waging an armed resistance against the Caroline regime that became known as the 'killing time'.
When it became apparent in the 1670s that Charles' Catholic brother James, or his newborn son, would likely succeed Charles at some point, the parliamentarians split broadly into two camps (this is a bit of a simplification, but a helpful one). The Whigs supported the exclusion of James from the line of succession, and the Torys supported loyalty to the King over religious concerns.
The Torys triumphed, and James succeeded. James had a solution to the problem that had been plaguing British politics for the past century, namely how to reconcile religious heterodoxy with the need for political solidarity. His solution was a Gallic style absolute monarchy modeled on the French court, combined with religious toleration for all. By replacing any political implications of religious allegiance with an absolute loyalty to the King, he hoped to keep the Kingdom together whilst allowing Catholics and religious dissenters into public life. Broadly speaking, the Tories supported this conception as the future of the British crowns, and the Whigs did not, opposing particularly the combination of increasing absolutism and freedom for Catholics, fearing this would simply turn England into a subject of France.
Fortunately for the Whigs, there was someone just as concerned to not see England fall into France's sphere of influence, William of Orange, who also conveniently had an army at his disposal. The Scottish theories of resistance I discussed earlier helped here, as some historians have argued that William was invited to take the crown on the basis of a Buchanaite/Covenanter conception of a conditional monarchy. This isn't to say William was powerless, he brought England and Scotland into war with France, essentially getting what he wanted out of the arrangement, but in doing so he agreed to ascend under a concept of the monarchy that left it more limited by Parliament than ever. So to finally answer your question, I would say 1688 was the moment that the Parliament definitively achieved greater influence than the King, but I hope I have managed to demonstrate that this was the culmination of a tension between two competing parliamentary visions of the future of the crown, rather than a simple triumph of parliament over monarchy.
It is also worth mentioning that these issues were still not entirely settled, and that arguments of crown prerogative over parliament still occurred even during the American revolution, see for example Eric Nelson's 'Patriot Royalism' essay.
Hi, you may be interested in the posts here. They're getting old now, and standards in the sub have raised since then, but there should still be lots of useful information. Posts are organized roughly chronologically.
Since the posts are old, they've all been archived by now. If you have follow-up questions for any of the users, just ask here & tag their username to notify them