ABSTRACT
Early modern Leeds was a growing parish of considerable dimensions in the West Riding of Yorkshire, busy producing woolen cloth sold across England and in northwest continental Europe. The Church of England had sole authority to baptise children and to register their existence. From the 1630s however, a strong Dissenter faction resorted to various subterfuges to avoid registration at the baptismal font. Nevertheless, abundant and continuous records make it possible to study sex ratios there, especially among the commoners. High male sex ratios characterised the entire late Elizabethan and Jacobean era, dropping only in years of severe famine. Hungry years in the 1690s also resulted in statistically significant high rates of masculinity, which recurred into the late 1720s and beyond.
