I came across this line quite by accident, whilst trying to find the origins of another London line of Applebys.  Unusually, almost all the evidence for the reconstruction of the early generations of this line came from Wills ... this family certainly knew how to provide us genealogists with the sort information we need to work out who married who and how everyone is related!

John Applebee, the elder of the two brothers was apprenticed in 1668 to John SHARDE, citizen and Armourer and Brazier of London.  It seems that his younger brother Charles was in turn apprenticed to his big brother John in 1683 (just after John was admitted as a Freeman of the City of London).  Charles apprenticeship papers helpfully provided the additional information that his father John Appleby was a Taylor of Redding in Berkshire.

The SHARDs were to feature heavily in this family, as JohnApplebee's son (another John and also an Armourer and Brasier) married Mary Shard, daughter of Sir Isaac Shard and his wife Dame Elizabeth.  John and Mary Applebee were major beneficiaries of Sir Isaac's will, inheriting estates in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and London.  But John's descendants were all to die out within three generations, eventually leaving a huge estate to a 77 year old spinster Josepha Martha Applebee.  Josepha's will reads like a lottery handout, with sums of £3,000 being bequeathed to distant cousins along with huge tracts of England.  It was thirty years before her will was finally proved!

Meanwhile younger brother Charles managed to produce a somewhat larger family - including five Vicars - but his branch was also short on men of the marrying kind, and eventually in 1822 when Josepha died, the bulk of her estate came across to this branch of the family - but it still ended up going to Caroline Maria Applebee, another elderly spinster, who in turn passed it all on to the children of her married sister. In fact only three of Carolines's cousins lived long enough to appear in the early censuses and they all seem to have died childless, so I don't hold out much hope of ever finding any living descendants of this line!  Some day, I will check out the death duty records to discover just how much the estate was worth, although given the length of time it took to prove Josepha Martha's will, perhaps it all ended up in the Chancellor's coffers?