London grew massively in population during this period, from about 200,000 in 1600 to over 575,000 by 1700, and in physical size, sprawling outside its city walls to encompass previously outlying districts such as Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, and Westminster.

London was also struck by waves of disease during this time, most notably the Great Plague in 1665.The period saw several attempts to enforce uniformity of worship from Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans.

London's merchants often met in the newly-introduced coffeehouses, and the city became the hub of an emerging global empire, with the headquarters of colonial institutions such as the East India Company.

Several of London's buildings suffered serious damage during the English Civil War and in the Interregnum period, as they were put to use by Parliament's army or destroyed for ideological reasons.

[32] On Sunday, 2 September 1666 the Great Fire of London broke out at one o'clock in the morning at a house on Pudding Lane in the southern part of the City.

Fanned by a southeasterly wind the fire spread quickly among the timber and thatched-roof buildings, which were primed to ignite after an unusually hot and dry summer.

[33] Burning for several days, the Fire destroyed about 60% of the City, including Old St Paul's Cathedral, 87 parish churches, 44 livery company halls and the Royal Exchange.

[38] In 1703, there was a hurricane which pulled the roofs off houses, toppled chimneys and church spires, pushed ships in the Thames from London Bridge down to Limehouse, and killed several people.

[42] In particular, the Earl of Bedford, Francis Russell, commissioned Inigo Jones to turn fields and orchards west of the City into Covent Garden, a square of aristocratic townhouses surrounding a marketplace.

[46] Jones based the project on the piazza in Livorno in Italy and the Place des Vosges in Paris, making the houses identical in order to give the impression that they were a single large mansion.

[40] This was to become the model for future efforts: In 1690, the Reverend R. Kirk wrote, "Since the burning, all London is built uniformly, the streets broader, the houses all of one form and height".

[1] He also rebuilt another 51 City churches, plus three outside the bounds of the Fire (St. Anne Soho, St. Clement Danes, and St. James Piccadilly), for which he worked unpaid, although he did receive generous bribes from the parish authorities.

[80] The second-biggest was "convulsions", or fits; the third was "ague and fever", which includes malaria; followed by "griping in the guts" (dysentery), smallpox and measles, rotten or abscessed teeth, old age, and dropsy.

[80] The preparations for the coronation of King James I and Anne of Denmark in 1603 were interrupted by a severe plague epidemic (which may have killed over 30,000 people) and by threats of assassination.

[88] In 1684, the hospital gained a new governor in Edward Tyson, who attempted to reform the institution somewhat by replacing the male warders with female nurses, and establishing a fund to provide clothing for the inmates.

[94] In 1603, James I knighted 133 men in a single evening in its Great Hall, and its governors included famous figures of the day such as Francis Bacon, William Laud, and the Duke of Monmouth.

[100] The society in turn founded several charity schools, at which the students received a free uniform in a distinctive colour, often gaining a nickname such as "Bluecoats" or "Greencoats".

[100] In October 1605, a search carried out in the basement of the Houses of Parliament revealed a man called Guy Fawkes with matches in his pocket and 36 barrels of gunpowder.

[101] Fawkes had been recruited to join the Gunpowder Plot by a group of fellow Catholics including Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, and John Wright.

[111] The whole congregation of a Seventh Day Baptist church in Bulstake Alley, Whitechapel, was arrested and sent to Newgate Prison, and their preacher, John James, was found guilty of treason, and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

[123] In 1698, a captain called Edward Rigby was sentenced to the pillory for buggery, after being caught in a sting operation at the George Tavern on Pall Mall set up by the Society for the Reformation of Manners.

[125] When prisons were overcrowded, it was easy for "gaol fever" (a form of typhus) to spread between inmates,[126] with Newgate in particular having such poor sanitary conditions that shops in the local area closed in warm weather because of the smell.

[66] In January 1684, a frost fair was held on the Thames, which had frozen solid enough not only to walk on, but to drive a coach, erect tents, and even roast an ox on.

[99] Blood sports such as bear-baiting, bull-baiting and cockfights were popular, and there is even a recorded instance of lion-baiting in 1604, when three mastiffs were pitted against a lion from the Tower of London with the king and queen in attendance.

[147] Other private houses had similar collections of curiosities, such as that belonging to Thomas Browne, William Charlton, the Royal Society, and Hans Sloane, the latter of which went on to become the core of the British Museum.

[149] The form of the novel began to coalesce in the latter half of the period, with works by London authors such as John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko.

[158] The opening of the New Exchange on 11 April 1609,[159] a market and retail centre, was celebrated with a masque, The Entertainment at Britain's Burse,[160] and the Lord Mayor's Show, which had been discontinued for some years, was revived by order of the king.

[168] The Italian theatrical form of commedia dell'arte came to London, featuring half-masked actors or puppets playing recurring characters such as Harlequin, Columbine, and Pierrot.

[174] The art-form of portraiture was particularly strong in this period, fuelled by major court painters such as Anthony van Dyck, Peter Lely, and Godfrey Kneller.

[65] Britain's strengthening connections to the wider world meant that Londoners were able to access and afford foreign foods like coffee, tea, chocolate, and sugar cane more easily.