Following the success of the Dutch East India company investors in England became very anxious to start investing at stocks as a way to make easy money.
As a result a variety of companies formed and began to sell stock.
Regardless of the legitimacy or rationality of these companies their stocks largely sold very well.
However, eventually some shareholders realized that the companies they had invested in were not actually returning any meaningful profits.
They began to sell their shares which burst the investing bubble caused everybody else to try to sell their now worthless shares.
In response to this crash, the British Government created a law that outlawed the issuing of shares