Lord Leicester closed a long life in 1677, and many other tenants afterwards occupied the mansion in the Fields. Under Anne it was the home of the German Ambassador, or 'Imperial Resident,' who lived in it far into the reign of the first George. At this time, judging from a water-colour bird's-eye view in the Crace Collection at the British Museum, it was a long two-storeyed building, with attics above, a courtyard in front, and a row of small shops or stalls extending on either side of its entrance gate. Behind came the garden, stretching northward, and decorated in the Dutch fashion with formal trees and statues. Hither, on a Saturday in January, 1712, conveyed unostentatiously in a hackney coach from Whitehall Stairs, came Eugene of Savoy, who, by desire of the Emperor Charles VI., had just crossed from the Hague in Her Majesty's 'Yatcht "Fubs"' (Captain Desborough), with the intention of preventing, if possible, what Prior calls that 'vile Utrecht Treaty.' His mission was to be fruitless from the outset, for at the Nore he was greeted with the news of Marlborough's disgrace, and his presence in England had little or no effect upon the pending proposals of peace. But for two months he was to be fêted and lionized by the nobility in a way which modest warrior and discreet diplomatist as he was--must have taxed his resources as much as a campaign in Flanders. His admirers mobbed him on all occasions. 'I could not see Prince Eugene at court to-day,'--writes Swift to Mrs. Johnson at Dublin,--'the crowd was so great. The Whigs contrive to have a crowd always about him, and employ the rabble to give the word when he sets out from any place.' Elsewhere Swift had said--'I hope and believe he comes too late to do the Whigs any good.' At first His Highness's appearance prepossessed him. He is not ill-looking, 'but well enough, and a good shape.' Later on he has revised his opinion. 'I saw Prince Eugene at court to-day very plain. He is plaguy yellow, and literally ugly besides.' A great Tory lady, Lady Strafford (wife of that haughty envoy to the Hague who declined to serve with Prior in the Utrecht negotiations) goes farther still. She calls him--her Ladyship spells far worse than Stella--a 'frittfull creature,' and adds, 'the Ladys here dont admire Prince Eugene, for he seemes to take very little notis of them,'--a sentiment in which we may perhaps detect a spice of the '_spreto injuria formho_'