In the meantime Lord Sandwich, a former friend of Wilkes and his associate in the debauchery carried on by the so-called monks of Medmenham, had produced before the House of Lords a copy of an obscene parody on Pope's _Essay on Man_, which Wilkes had written for the delectation of his intimate friends, but never intended to publish. With much difficulty, and not without some treachery, Sandwich had managed to obtain a copy of this infamous production, and he was now base enough to produce it in evidence against his recent boon companion, and to demand his punishment. The House condemned the poem as a blasphemous libel, but the treachery and hypocrisy displayed by Sandwich, whose own vices were notorious, raised a storm of public indignation, and when the _Beggar's Opera_ was shortly afterwards being performed at Covent Garden, and Macheath exclaimed, in the words put into his mouth by Gay, "_That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I own surprises me_," the audience were quick to apply the words to the treacherous earl, who was ever afterwards known as _Jemmy Twitcher_.[194] [Sidenote: Wilkes expelled the House, 19 Jan., 1764.] In January of the next year (1764) Wilkes ought to have appeared before the House of Commons to answer for his conduct in relation to publishing No. 45 of the _North Briton_. He had, however, fled to France after receiving a wound in a duel, and was unable to travel, so at least the medical certificates which he forwarded to the Speaker alleged, and so we feel bound to believe, although the House of Commons evidently entertained some doubts as to the serious nature of his wound. The matter was debated in his absence, and in the end a resolution was passed expelling him the House (19 Jan.).[195] [Sidenote: Sentence of outlawry on Wilkes, 1 Nov., 1764.]