Keating, despite his clerical office, was clearly a violent and turbulent individual, who dealt with an attempt to remove him as Prior by throwing his intended successor, Marmaduke Langley, into prison, where he died. He was disgraced many years later for his part in the attempt to put the pretender Lambert Simnel on the throne of England, and died in wretched poverty in about 1491. By his wife Anne Wogan, Robert had at least one son, Thomas Dowdall, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, through whom he was the ancestor of Archbishop George Dowdall and George's nephew James Dowdall, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.