Thor of Tranent - Charter Appearances and Sheriffdom

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. 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.

In a charter issued at Stirling granting a salt pan to Kelso Abbey in 1143, he appeared as Tor vicecomite, Thor the Sheriff. Sometime in the following year, he was at Edinburgh Castle, witnessing a grant by the king of land in Dalkeith to Holyrood Abbey.

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. During the same period, he witnessed a grant issued from the same location by Earl Henry of lands at Duddingston to Kelso Abbey.

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. 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.

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 land of Clerchetun (i.e. Clerkington) to the church of St Mary of Haddington. Durand is a Normanisation of the Scandinavian name Thor.

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".

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".