Hello Megan,
There are a number of periods in the recorded history of sunspots where the SUn hardly produced any sunspots for several decades spanning a number of solar cycles. The most famous of these is the Maunder Minimum which occurred between 1645 - 1715. During this 70 year spell very few sunspots were seen on the solar disk. This coincided with longer and deeper winters in northern Europe and North America. The period from aroun 1200 (although there is a debate about when it actually started) to about 1850 is known as the Little Ice Age and contains the Maunder minimum as well as the Sporer minimum (1420 - 1570), Dalton minimum (1790 - 1830) and Wolf minimum (1282 - 1342). The Dalton minimum also had low sunspot numbers. The Sporer and Wolf minima occurred before sunspot observations were being made routinely and are inferred from other sources associated with soalr activity such as carbon-14 radiodating and tree ring measurements.
David