In 1530 he was elected fellow of Pembroke Hall; was ordained subdeacon 24 February 1532, and priest 21 September 1534; and commenced MA(Cantab) in 1532 and BD in 1540.
He received over time the livings of Halford, Warwickshire (1547), Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire (1558), and Bishop's Hampton, Herefordshire (1559), of Plainsford, Gloucestershire, and .
As archdeacon he attended the convocation of Canterbury at the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary (October 1553); according to Heylyn few of the Edwardian clergy were present.
Haddon and Aylmer were reluctant to comply with the conditions proposed for the discussion, but Cheyney who held Lutheran views on the subject began, and, the others afterwards coming to his assistance, it continued for four days.
He resigned his archdeaconry in 1557, and became canon of Gloucester 14 November 1558; he had retired for a time to his living of Halford in the diocese of Worcester, under Richard Pate, one of those exempt from executions for heresy under Queen Mary.
On the accession of Elizabeth I Cheyney went on a preaching tour, and during his absence on this work the ecclesiastical visitors employed to carry out the queen's injunctions of 1559 visited Halford, where they found the rector absent, and the priest in charge a probable Catholic.
On 3 May the archbishop issued a commission to Cheyney, as commendatory of the see of Bristol, to visit the diocese, appointing him his vicar-general in spirituals.
The bishop wrote to Cecil, complaining of the encouragement thus given to puritanism which was rampant in his diocese, and expressing his wish to resign.
From a letter (22 December 1566) of Edmund Gheast to Cecil it seems that Cheyney was offended by the insertion of the word 'only' in Article XXVIII on the Eucharist, and that he found it impossible to subscribe to this statement of doctrine.
In his letter to Cheyney, by whom he had been ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church, he commends him for dealing gently with Catholics in his diocese, and exhorts him to convert.