Sentence:  . And the message that came was by the mouth of a kind of jackal or <WSD>lickpot</WSD> of John Dick's — who, for reasons of his own, hated me, chiefly because I took no share in the foulness of him and his subservient crew. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  An untrustworthy sycophant.