The Privy Council ordered the arrest of both Howard and Arundell; Oxford immediately met secretly with Arundell to convince him to support his allegations against Howard and Southwell, offering him money and a pardon from the Queen. Arundell refused this offer, and he and Howard initially sought asylum with Mendoza. Only after being assured that they would be placed under house arrest in the home of a Privy Councillor, did the pair give themselves up. During the first weeks after their arrest they pursued a threefold strategy: they would admit to minor crimes, prove Oxford a liar by his offers of money to testify to his accusations, and demonstrate that their accuser posed the real danger to the Crown. The extensive list of allegations to discredit Oxford included atheism, lying, heresy, disobedience to the crown, treason, murder for hire, sexual perversion, and pederasty with his English and Italian servants ("buggering a boy that is his cook and many other boys"), habitual drunkenness, vowing to murder various courtiers, and declaring that Elizabeth had a bad singing voice.