“However, if I had design’d this as a Satyr on any Person whose Crimes I had thought worthy of it, I shou’d not have thought the Resentment of such a one considerable enough to have obliged me to deny it.  But as I have only related a Story, which a particular Friend of mine assures me is Matter of Fact, and happen’d at the Time when he was in Paris:  I wou’d not have it made Use of as an Umbrage for the Tongue of Scandal to blast the Character of any one, a Stranger to such detested Guilt.”

Before long the term “secret history” fell into disrepute, so that writers found it necessary to make a special plea for the veracity of their work.  “The Double Marriage,” “The Mercenary Lover,” and “Persecuted Virtue” were distinguished as “true secret histories,” and in the Preface to “The Pair Hebrew:  or, a True, but Secret History of Two Jewish Ladies, Who lately resided in London” Mrs. Haywood at once confessed the general truth of the charge against the type and defended the accuracy of her own production.

“There are so many Things, meerly the Effect of Invention, which have been published, of late, under the Title of SECRET HISTORIES, that, to distinguish this, I am obliged to inform my Reader, that I have not inserted one Incident which was not related to me by a Person nearly concerned in the Family of that unfortunate Gentleman, who had no other Consideration in the Choice of a Wife, than to gratify a present Passion for the Enjoyment of her Beauty.”

About 1729 Eliza Haywood seems to have found the word “Life” or “Memoirs” on the title-page a more effective means for gaining the credence of her readers, and after that time she wrote, in name at least, no more secret histories.  The fictions so denominated in “Secret Histories, Novels and Poems” were in no way different from her novels, and had only the slightest, if any, foundation in fact.

A novel actually based upon a real occurrence, however, is “Dalinda, or the Double Marriage.  Being the Genuine History of a very Recent, and Interesting Adventure” (1749), not certainly known to have been written by Mrs. Haywood, but bearing in the turns of expression, the letters, and the moralized ending, almost indubitable marks of her handiwork.  One at least of her favorite quotations comes in at an appropriate point, and the Preface to the Reader states that the author’s sole design is to show the danger of inadvertently giving way to the passions—­a stock phrase with the author of “Love in Excess.”  The “Monthly Review” informs us that the story is “the affair betwixt Mr. Cresswell and Miss Scrope, thrown into the form of a novel."[1] The situation is somewhat similar to that described in “The Mercenary Lover.”