It is tempting to conjecture what considerations may have prevailed to make some houses substitute money grants for the provision of food in kind. The tendency certainly grew with the custom of forming _familiae_ which messed separately and it certainly increased with time. Even at Catesby, which we saw to be a typical example of communal housekeeping in 1414-5, it seems to have become customary to give money for some at least of the victuals in 1442. The tendency also grew with poverty, as appears from Alnwick's visitations, though it is not clear whence the nuns obtained the wherewithal to feed themselves adequately, unless they had the use of extra funds of their own. It may also be conjectured that the system would be easier to work in a town than in the depths of the country. In a town the nuns could buy in the open market, and it was as easy for individuals to buy in small quantities as for the cellaress to buy wholesale. In the country, however, the convent would not only be more dependent on the home farm, but such purchases as had to be made at occasional fairs and weekly markets could more easily be made in bulk, a consideration which also accounts for the fact that the barrels and cades of salt fish for Lent were usually laid in wholesale by the cellaress. Moreover it would often be convenient for a town house to lease out the greater number of its demesnes and to depend upon what it could purchase for its daily fare. St Mary de Pre is particularly interesting in this respect; the 1486-8 account shows no sign of any home farm; the income of the house is derived almost entirely from "rents of assise and rents farm" within the town of St Albans and in other places and from tithes, and the proportion of farms or leases is noticeably large. Even the bread and beer distributed among the sisters did not come from a home farm; it was bought with 52_s._ received from the Abbot of St Albans for that purpose; the kitchener of the parent abbey similarly provided the nuns with 12_s._, "for potage money departyd amongs the susters for a yere," and at the forester's office they received 8_s._ for their fuel. Occasional references show what a variety of household charges the nuns sometimes had to bear out of their _peculia_, and the other sources of their private income. At Campsey in 1532, for instance, the subprioress says that the prioress will not allow her servants to go out upon the necessary errands of the nuns, but they hire outsiders at their own cost and Dame Isabella Norwiche says that sick nuns in the time of their sickness bear the cost of what is needful to them and it is not provided at the charge of the house[1043].