The government's closure of peaceful avenues for reform agitation, and the prospect of French assistance, encouraged a radical rump to consider the threat implicit in the Copenhagen Fields address: to achieve universal male suffrage and annual parliaments by physical force. In this, they were supported by the United Irishmen. In the summer of 1797, following the Spithead and Nore mutinies, in which the government had been quick to see the hand of radical societies, the Irish priest James Coigly arrived from Manchester. In Manchester Goigly and a cotton spinner from Belfast, James Dixon, had helped convert the town's Corresponding Society into the republican, United Englishmen. Bound by a test that promised to "Remove the diadem and take off the crown ... to exalt him that is low and abuse him that is high". the United men went on to organise in Stockport, Bolton, Warrington and Birmingham.