prebend of South Grantham (Lincolnshire) in the Salisbury diocese until February 1485/86, when he exchanged it for that of Chardstock, Dorset, and two months later received the prebend of Horton, Dorset, which he held until 1508. He was described as magister, or scientist, by 1486. In the early 1490s he was named a chamberlain of the English Hospice in Rome and rented one of its houses. At Bologna he was admitted DCL in 1492; he was in Rome between 1492 and 1494. Having received the prebend of North Kelsey, Lincolnshire (in Lincoln cathedral) in 1495/96, which he held until 1500, he succeeded Thomas Langton as Provost of Queen's College in 1496. Langton was elected Archbishop of Canterbury but died in January 1500/01 before he could be installed. His will appointed Christopher Bainbridge one of his executors, and Bainbridge was one of three who swore to administer at probate in 1501. He may therefore have participated in the establishment of Langton's tomb and chantry in the chapel of St Birinus at Winchester Cathedral, and was certainly involved in setting up his chantry in Bongate, Appleby. By 1497 he had become chaplain to king Henry VII, and in 1501 was named archdeacon of Surrey in the diocese of Winchester. Having been presented to the prebend of Strensall, North Riding of Yorkshire, in the cathedral of York in September 1503, in December of that year he became dean of York. He was appointed Master of the Rolls in 1504, and was incorporated at Lincoln's Inn on 20 January 1505: in the same year, being admitted to the Privy Council, he became Dean of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. He was appointed Bishop of Durham on 27 August 1507. Archbishop of York and Cardinal Bainbridge was translated to York on 22 September 1508 (a sign of the favour he enjoyed at court), where his kinsman Dr Henry Machell, Doctor of both Laws in the University of Cambridge, became Commissary (holding the prebend of North Newbald), and Robert Langton his Treasurer (with the prebend of Weighton): both of them were admitted to the York Guild of Corpus Christi in 1510. Bainbridge attended the coronation of King Henry VIII on 23 June 1509, and on 24 September Henry appointed him to be his personal Orator, Procurator, Agent, Factor, Negotiator and Special Nuncio to the Roman Curia of Pope Julius II. In this mission, which occupied the remainder