Britain's monarchy stretches back over 1,000 years, even before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Although Britain has flirted with absolute monarchy -- in which the powers of the king or queen are virtually unlimited -- the English have always returned to constitutionalism. The signing of the Magna Carta (1215) was one of the great hinges of political history. The monarchy agreed that no political leader was above the rule of law. The monarchy asserted the principles of due process and trial by jury.

No other political system at that time, anywhere in the world, upheld these basic concepts of justice. Foundational to the American constitutional order, they still have no place in many parts of the world today.

When King Charles I tried to rule without Parliament, he set off a constitutional crisis. Although there were other issues in play, the English Civil War (1642-1651) was an existential struggle between political absolutism and constitutionalism. In the end, Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan lost the argument. In the decades that followed, England became the epicenter of the most important debates occurring anywhere over mankind's inalienable rights: freedom of speech, of the press, of the right to assemble, and the right to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. All of these rights, of course, would be exported to the American colonists and enshrined in their state constitutions.

The British monarchy, despite its often-contentious relationship with Parliament, became an indispensable ally in the struggle for self-government: The Glorious Revolution (1688-89) marked another milestone in constitutionalism.

To most Britons, William of Orange was not an invader. The real invader was James II who, after ascending the throne, trampled the ancient English constitution underfoot. The new monarchs, William and Mary, came to restore it. They committed themselves -- as Protestant rulers, submissive to the authority of the God of the Bible -- to obey the laws of Parliament. They agreed to limit their own powers and defend the principle of government by consent of the governed. And they endorsed the English Bill of Rights, which is considered the model for the American Bill of Rights.

That the pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal. That Elections of Members of Parliament ought to be free. That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.

John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689), his revolutionary defense of government by consent, was vindicated in this remarkable political and cultural moment. These and other documents, legitimized and enforced by the British Crown, laid a new foundation in the West for individual rights and constitutional government. Together, they shaped the fundamental laws of the North American colonies.

Thus, a century before the Americans launched a revolution to reclaim their "chartered rights" as Englishmen, England's monarchs had decisively rejected political absolutism. They presided over a culture of common law, rooted in a belief in mankind's "natural and inalienable" rights. In this way, they helped the West to reimagine the core purpose of government: to secure these God-given rights and freedoms for all citizens of the commonwealth.

The impact of all this on the American Founders was profound -- not only on the concepts embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, but also on the very structure of the Constitution itself. As the Founders designed the separation of powers, for example, they turned to Montesquieu, the French theorist who prized the English example. "He was an ardent admirer of the English constitution," wrote Russell Kirk in The Roots of American Order. "He finds the best government of his age in the constitutional monarchy of England, where the subject enjoyed personal and civic freedom."