Robert, perceiving that all the trouble and caution of his predecessor had been of no avail, made a vigorous opposition to the abbot of Shrewsbury, in London and elsewhere, in the cause aforesaid, and laboured arduously on behalf of his monastery.
De Cheynestone was concerned with an ongoing legal-dispute between Vale Royal and Shrewsbury Abbey from almost the moment he took office, which had begun in Abbot Peter's—Robert's predecessor's— time.
[7] On Peter's death in 1340, the Abbot of Shrewsbury simply presented de Cheynston with another writ of scire facias, and the dispute continued[3] with "many allegations of each party.
[7] Abbot de Cheyneston continued the building works which had been on-going, but which, due to a perennial state of penury, had never been completed in the fifty years since the Abbey's foundation.
[8] He managed, with the slender resources at his disposal, to give the choir and north end of the church a lead roof in the first two years of his reign[note 3] but could not afford to have any further substantial work carried out.