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In spring 1665, parishes began to report deaths attributable to the bubonic plague, which had already attacked London several times early in the century (the population would already have been weakened by an exceptionally hard winter during which the River Thames had frozen). By November 1665, when the epidemic ceased in the cold weather, the lives of over 100,000 people had been lost. Read more about the plague in 1665. This contributed to what was arguably the most influential change of the seventeenth century - that of population. For the first half of the century the population continued to grow, reaching a peak of about six to seven million. This put pressure on food resources, land and jobs, and increased price inflation.
By contrast, the late seventeenth century saw the easing, if not the disappearance of these problems. Research has placed the most emphasis on family-planning habits as the cause of this change, but new methods of farming, which dramatically increased the yield per acre and the extension of the acreage under plough also played a significant part.From the 1670s, England became an exporter as opposed to a net importer of grain. The seventeenth century is also probably the first in English history in which more people emigrated than immigrated, although there was a massive influx of the Protestant Huguenots in 1685, following persecution in France. (It is thought that over 20,000 Huguenots settled in London, forming five per cent of the population).
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