That's a very long and difficult question, taking into account many centuries of development. Absolute monarchy was the norm in Early Modern Europe, with the power of monarchs limited mainly by their personal fitness for the role and the consent of a substantial enough proportion of the ruling classes.

The key distinguishing feature of the English monarchy (this was before the Act of Union in 1707) as opposed to, say, the French or Spanish monarchies was that England lacked a strong central bureaucracy and a standing army. To fight foreign wars, the king or queen needed to call a Parliament to consent to raise taxes and on mostly unpaid local administrators to raise them.

These Parliaments were rarely realistic about the massive and ever rising costs of war in an age where armies were growing in size and complexity all the time, which is why Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) and James I (r. 1603-1625) tended to avoid war or, in the former case, try to do it on the cheap.

Parliament was not a fixed part of the constitution, however; it was called at the request of the monarch and it was not unusual for many years to go by without one. Charles I (r. 1625-1649) was not breaking any rules by not calling one for 11 years. Where he did antagonise most of his subjects was by (a) a religious policy that looked pseudo-Catholic and (b) raising money for wars - or even for regular administration - by archaic taxes like Ship Money that violated the spirit if not the letter of the law.

When that war was to be fought against his own subjects in Scotland who rebelled against his religious policy, much of England was in sympathy with the Scots and the first Parliament he called in 11 years in 1640 was wholly unready to vote through taxes to fight that war without reform; he dismissed it and fought on, but then found himself having to call another.

The Long Parliament (1640-1653) was to become the means by which a large part of the ruling class, with overwhelming popular support fought a civil war against Charles, defeated him and, when he still failed to negotiate a settlement in good faith, deposed and executed him, and abolished the monarchy.

Eleven years later, after various attempted settlements had failed, his son was recalled but there was no question of a return to an absolute monarchy - and still no standing army or central bureaucracy. The monarch had to rule with the consent of the ruling classes or he would be turfed out as Charles I's second son James II found out in 1688, when he too was deposed because the nation rebelled against his religious policy. Thereafter, the restrictions on the monarchy were enacted in statute and no monarch ever tried to abrogate them.