Former and potential United Irish members regrouped with previously neglected lower-rank Jacobins and Defenders in a series of "ephemeral organisation" (The Philanthropic Society, the Huguenots, the Illuminati, the Druids' Lodges...) used as a cover for their activities in Dublin, but also to spread the movement into the provinces. The authorities came down heavily on the Belfast radicals, with Castlereagh personally supervising the arrests of Neilson, Russell and Charles Teeling in September 1796. But early in 1797 their organising vision prevailed. All the various republican clubs and cover lodges, and much of Defender network, were formally marshalled in a local and provincial delegate-structure under a national United Irish executive in Dublin Among others, the directorate included Thomas Addis Emmet; Richard McCormick, Tone's replacement as secretary to the Catholic Committee; and two disillusioned parliamentary patriots: the future Napoleonic general Arthur O'Connor and the popular Lord Edward Fitzgerald.