Robert died on 24 September 1218. Before his death, St Robert established an order of Trinitarian Friars at Knaresborough Priory, but he warned them that, when his time came, the monks of Fountains Abbey would try to carry his body away to their own establishment. He urged his followers to resist them, which they did, and so St. Robert was buried in his chapel cut from the steep rocky crags by the river, where, it was said, a medicinal oil flowed from his tomb; pilgrims came from near and far to be healed by it.