Thor of Tranent

Infobox_Politician
name = Thor (Thorald, Durand)
birth_date = Unknown
birth_place =
residence = East Lothian
death_date = circa mid-to-late 12th cent.
death_place =
office = Sheriff in Lothian
predecessor = none known
successor = Robert fitz Guy
majority =
spouse = not known
children = Sveinn, Alexander, William
footnotes =

Thor of Tranent, also known as Thor, son of Sveinn or Thor, son of Swain (fl. 1127 x 1150), Lord of Tranent and Sheriff of Lothian, was a landlord and chieftain active in Lothian in the reign of King David I of Scotland. He is attested in a large number of charters during King David's reign in Lothian, both as a charter witness on charters granted by other patrons and on charters he himself issued. His name appears either as Thor son of Sveinn or "Thor of Tranent", the latter appellation deriving from his ownership of the "barony" of Tranent, East Lothian, lands including a wide area around the modern town, including, for instance, Prestonpans. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", pp. 322, 421.]

Charter appearances and sheriffdom

His earliest attested appearance is probably that of 1127, when he witnessed as "Thor de Trauernent" a charter of King David granting land in Edinburgh to the church of St Cuthbert of Edinburgh. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 72.] As "Thor filius Swani" (written "Thoro filio Swani"), in 1130 he witnessed a favourable grant by King David to Dunfermline Abbey regarding rights over ships trading at Inveresk, East Lothian. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 87.]

In a charter issued at Stirling granting a salt pan to Kelso Abbey in 1143, he appeared as "Tor vicecomite", Thor the Sheriff. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 159.] Sometime in the following year, he was at Edinburgh Castle, witnessing a grant by the king of land in Dalkeith to Holyrood Abbey. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 160.]

Appearing once more as "sheriff", at an uncertain point between 1143 and 1147, he was witness to a royal grant issued at Edinburgh of a toft in the burgh of Haddington, East Lothian, to Dunfermline Abbey. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 203.] During the same period, he witnessed a grant issued from the same location by Earl Henry of lands at Duddingston to Kelso Abbey. [Barrow (ed.), "Acts of Malcolm IV", no. 29.]

Around 1150 he witnessed a grant by Robert, Bishop of St Andrews, passing over the church of "Lohworuora" (later renamed Borthwick, Midlothian) to Herbert, Bishop of Glasgow. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 230.] There was a charter to the Manuel Priory, now lost, dating to Máel Coluim IV's reign (1153-1165), that mentions a perambulation of the lands of Manuel conducted by Thor son of Sveinn and Geoffrey de Melville. [Barrow (ed.), "Acts of Malcolm IV", no. 270.]

He is almost certainly the "Durandus vicecomes", mentioned in two charters dating between 1140 and 1150, issued by king David and his son Earl Henry, granting the the land of "Clerchetun" (i.e. Clerkington) to the church of St Mary of Haddington. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", nos. 134, 135; Reid & Barrow, "Sheriffs of Scotland", pp. 13, & n. 32; see also following notes.] Durand is a Normanisation of the Scandinavian name Thor. [Barrow (ed.), "Acts of William I", p. 64, n. 99.]

His sheriffdom's name is unclear, and perhaps did not have one originally; at later stages it was called, variously, Edinburgh, Haddington, Lothian, and Linlithgow, and so for that reason he is sometimes called "sheriff of Lothian". [Barrow (ed.), "Acts of Malcolm IV", p. 46, & n. 3; Reid & Barrow, "Sheriffs of Scotland", p. 13, & n. 31.]

As it happens, one of Thor's own charters survive in a copy in the cartulary of Holyrood Abbey. The charter is a grant of his parish church at Tranent to that abbey, made around 1150. It was witnessed by William, Bishop of Moray, Osbern, Abbot of Jedburgh, Thor, Archdeacon of Lothian, Aiulf (Æþelwulf), Dean of Lothian, Nicholas, royal clerk (future Chamberlain of Scotland, as well as by Thor's own seneschal Gille Míchéil, and the lesser known figures "Neis flius Chiluni", Eadmund son of Forn, Bernard son of Tocce, Eadmund of "Fazeside" and perhaps a man called "Alden". [For all this, see Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", no. 214.]

Legacy

Three of Thor's sons are known, Sveinn, Alexander and William, all of whom appear in charters in the reign of William the Lion. His eldest son might have been Sveinn, who in addition to his estates in East Lothian appears to have become lord of Crawford in Clydesdale; Sveinn appears to have left only an heiress as his successor, the latter marrying the Anglo-French mercenary William de Lindsey, Justiciar of Lothian and ancestor of the Lindsay earls of Crawford. appeared. A "Sveinn son of Thor" was lord of Ruthven in the Angus-Gowrie borderlands.

His two other known sons Alexander and William both had non-Scandinavian names. Alexander seems to be the same "Alexander son of Thor" who is attested as Sheriff of Clackmannan between 11205 and 1207. [Reid & Barrow, "Sheriffs of Scotland", p. 9.] Alexander's own son William was lord of Ochiltree near Binny, West Lothian.Barrow (ed.), "Acts of William I", p. 64, n. 99.]

The other son, William, was was Sheriff of Stirling in a document dated circa 1165, and by 1194 at least William's son Alexander (fl. 1189 x 1223) had succeeded him. [Reid & Barrow, "Sheriffs of Scotland", p. 42, though the father-son succession may have been interrupted by one Radulf (fl. 1165 x 1177), who came either before or after "William son of Thorald"; see also Barrow (ed.), "Acts of William I", nos. 130, 308, 323.] William is also known to have granted the church of Kirkintilloch in Clydesdale to Cambuskenneth Abbey, suggesting he shared in the fruits of the family's expansion into that western region. [Barrow (ed.), "Acts of William I", no. 528, & p. 421.]

Two settlements in Lothian, Thurston (East Lothian) and Swanston (Midlothian), mean "Thor's village" and "Sveinn's village" respectively, and were probably founded in this period. [Barrow, "Anglo-Norman Era", pp. 39.] Through some unknown mechanism, in William the Lion's reign the land of Tranent was under the control of the incoming de Quincy family. [Lawrie, "Early Scottish Charters", p. 421.]

Notes

References

*
*
*
*