When British kings wanted to dispose of troublesome enemies -- real or imagined -- they often had them or their colleagues arrested on pretextual charges and then brutally tortured until confessions were extracted. The confessions were then read aloud during so-called trials; and, of course, the defendant was convicted of whatever crime was the subject of the confession. All this was done in order to satisfy the political, and in many cases the personal, desires of the monarch by creating the...