The duke soon intimated this fact to the new King of England, and at the same time hinted that he had no wish to make matters disagreeable (which he could easily do if he wished, for the King and Queen of Prussia were furious), if his silence were made worth his while. George took the hint, and despatched a messenger to Wolfenbüttel promising the duke a subsidy. In return the messenger brought back the duplicate of the will, and this too was destroyed. The only excuse that can be urged for the King’s conduct, which probably defrauded among others his sister, the Queen of Prussia, and his son Prince Frederick, was that George the First had treated the will of his consort, Sophie Dorothea of Celle, in the same way, to the detriment, it was suspected, of both his son and his daughter. George the Second also, when Electoral Prince of Hanover, had reason to believe that his father had unjustly deprived him of a substantial inheritance which had been left him by his maternal grandfather, the Duke of Celle. The burning of wills seems to have been a peculiarity of the Hanoverian family at this time, for a year or two later, Frederick, Prince of Wales, accused his father of destroying the will of his uncle Ernest Augustus Duke of York and Bishop of Osnabrück. He died a year after his brother, George the First, and both Prince Frederick and the Queen of Prussia declared that they would have largely benefited by his death had it not been for the chicanery of George the Second. Queen Caroline always stoutly denied this imputation, and maintained that the Duke of York had nothing to leave, except £50,000 which he left to his nephew King George, and his jewels which he bequeathed to his niece the Queen of Prussia, to whom they were immediately sent. But neither the King nor the Queen of Prussia were satisfied with this explanation, and they also had a further dispute with George about the French possessions of his mother, Sophie Dorothea, which she had inherited through her mother, Eléonore d’Olbreuse, who was descended from an ancient Huguenot family of Poitou.