This is an exceptional instance: generally the farm has to be sent to the lord's residence, probably after a deduction for the requirements of the manor in which it was gathered. When it had reached this stage the system is already in decay. It is not only difficult to provide for the carriage, but actually impossible to keep some of the articles from being spoilt. Bread sent to Westminster from some Worcestershire possession of the minster would not have been very good when it reached its destination. The step towards money-payments is natural and necessary. Before leaving the food-rents we must take notice of one or two more peculiarities of this system. It is obvious that it was arranged from above, if one may use the expression. The assessment does not proceed in this case by way of an estimate of the paying or producing strength of each unit subjected to it, _i.e._ of each peasant household. The result is not made up by multiplying the revenue from every holding by the number of such holdings. The whole reckoning starts from the other end, from the wants of the manorial administration. The requirements of a night or of a week are used as the standard to which the taxation has to conform. This being the case, the correspondence between the amount of the taxes and the actual condition of the tax-payer was only a very loose one. Manors of very different size were brought into the same class in point of assessment, and the rough distinctions between a whole farm and half-a-farm could not follow at all closely the variety of facts in real life, even when they were supplemented by the addition of round sums of money. [Assessment under the farm-system.]