Last time we [talked about this] (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gial8c/i_just_heard_a_british_journalist_call_the_coming/) it was a bit of a train wreck, but we had a good time anyway. The short is there were a few factors that heavily hit the production values and economy of England in the early 18th century, the primary being ongoing wars followed by a once in a lifetime winter. The practice of "inclosure" had pushed many to the urban areas and destroyed the value of labor in the process, but that really hit in the mid to late 17th century and serves as more of a backdrop for the conditions at the time we're discussing than a true cause. Still, those extra people - sturdy beggars, they're called - put additional strain on the economy. There was tension with Scotland, facing economic struggles all its own, as it was more officially absorbed into the Empire in the early 1700s. There had been upheaval in the monarchy late in the 17th century, and instability never leads to productivity. Then there was wars... lots of wars. Expensive wars (the most expensive up to that time, in fact) and wars happening in far away lands. Wars that were detrimental to their trade capacity starting with the Anglo Dutch Wars in the 2nd half of the 17th, then a series of Atlantic and European conflicts would follow them, flowing into the new century and culminating in Queen Anne's War/War of the Spanish Succession. Despite some important victories that occured in the first decade of the 1700s in the European theatre, in 1706 productivity within England had fallen about 15% from a trade deprived, struggling, poor, overstrained economy coupled with a mildly bad crop year. Within a few more years an exceptionally rare and bitterly cold winter (known now as the Great Freeze) would strike Europe, happening in 1709, and plunging production, and the rest of England's economy, into the toilet with another huge drop, this one ~13%. For reference, the only three years on record that saw a production/GDP contraction of +10%, according to data from the Bank of England, were 1706, 1709, and 2020, making it the worst economic crisis there in over 300 years. The Bank is who originally forecast this crisis to be "the worst in 300 years" and did so last spring, and it's from their own records and data that they came to this conclusion.