Collecting the dead for burial during the Great Plague of London. The Great Plague (1665-66) was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in the Kingdom of England (part of modern-day United Kingdom). The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people, about 15% of London's population. The 1664-66 epidemic was on a far smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic but was caused by a particularly virulent strain of the disease; it was remembered afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400 year timespan of the Second Pandemic.