This burnt to the ground at Christmas 1497, with the royal family in residence; accounts of it made by a foreign ambassador to the court describe a catastrophe so big in magnitude that it nearly killed the king himself. However, within months Henry began a magnificent new palace in a version of Renaissance style. This, called Richmond Palace and now lost save for some fragments, has been described as the first prodigy house, a term for the ostentatious mansions of Elizabeth's courtiers and others, and was influential on other great houses for decades to come as well as a seat of royal power and pageantry of an equivalent of modern-day Buckingham Palace or the 18th century St. James's Palace.