The court party at the same time endeavoured to intrigue with the Independents, whose want of sympathy in Presbyterian projects had become obvious to all. Flattering offers were made to them if they would break with the Scotch, abandon the Covenant, join the Royalists, and agree to the establishment of a moderate Episcopacy. Toleration was promised upon these conditions, and it was said: "Mr. Nye should be one of the King's chaplains, and several other Independents should be highly preferred and rewarded."[380] With these larger intrigues were mixed up certain minor ones for the purpose of inducing officers of the garrison at Windsor Castle and Aylesbury to betray those places into the King's hands. The person who appears most prominently among the Royalist agents in these schemes was one Serjeant-major Ogle, who had been taken prisoner by the Parliament, and who was lodged in Winchester House. References to him, as a notorious plotter in the service of his Majesty, occur in the publications of that day, and he also figures in that capacity upon the pages of the Parliamentary journals.[381] His own version of the part he played comes to light in the following letter found in the State Paper Office. Giving an account of himself at a later period, he says:-- "It pleased his Majesty," that blessed martyr, my ever-blessed master, to give his express orders unto me (then a prisoner in Winchester House, only upon his Majesty's interest), to proceed with Mr. Nye, Goodwin, Homstead, Grafton, Moseley, Devenish, and some other of the Independent faction, according to a letter of mine unto the Earl of Bristol, intimating their desires to his Majesty, on their own and all the rests' behalf, in order to their plenary satisfaction and freedom from pressure of conscience in point of worship, which they judged might more easily and safely be obtained, and by them more honestly and honourably accepted from the King than the Covenant then in its triumphant career in London, they having failed of their expectation from the address they made to his Majesty by Sir Basil Brooke. Upon receipt of which warrant from his Majesty, I did conclude upon certain articles, or rather propositions, in order to a treaty upon their coming to Oxford, for which purpose I received a safe conduct from his Majesty, with a blank for such names as I thought fit to insert, and a hundred pounds out of his Majesty's county, towards relief of my necessities. [Sidenote: _Court Intrigues._]