Christopher Bainbridge ( 1462/1464 – 14 July 1514) was an English Cardinal of the Catholic Church. Of Westmorland origins, he was a nephew of Bishop Thomas Langton of Winchester, represented the continuation of Langton's influence and teaching, and succeeded him in many of his appointments, not least as provost of The Queen's College in the University of Oxford. Towards the end of the reign of King Henry VII he was successively Master of the Rolls, a Privy Counsellor, Dean of Windsor and Bishop of Durham. Becoming Archbishop of York (and therefore Primate of England) in 1508, he was sent as procurator of King Henry VIII to the papal court of Pope Julius II, where he was active in the diplomatic affairs leading to Henry's war with France, and took part in the election of Julius's successor Pope Leo X. He was murdered by poisoning in Italy in 1514, and was succeeded as Archbishop of York by Thomas Wolsey. Early life Christopher Bainbridge was born in Hilton, Westmorland (then in the parish of St Michael Bongate, in Appleby) to an established local family with roots in Bainbridge, North Yorkshire. He was said to have been fifty years old at his death and must therefore have been born about 1464. A son of Reginald Bainbridge and Isobel Langton, he was a nephew and protégé of Thomas Langton of Appleby, Bishop of Winchester, a relationship formative in his ecclesiastical career. Hilton is due east of Appleby, on the eastern margin of the Vale of Eden where it rises into the Pennines. It is supposed that Christopher received part of his education at The Queen's College, Oxford although there is no surviving record of this. His uncle Langton had been a student of the college, and returned to it in 1487 as Provost, a post to which Bainbridge himself succeeded. He also studied law at Ferrara and Bologna. He was granted an indult in 1479 which allowed him to hold church benefices while still unordained and under the age of 16, and another in 1482 that allowed him to hold more than one benefice concurrently. His cousin Robert Langton "the pilgrim" (died 1524) was educated at Queen's College Oxford and there proceeded D.C.L. in 1501. The appointment of Thomas Langton to the see of Salisbury left a vacancy for Bainbridge's presentation to the church of Pembridge, Herefordshire on 28 April 1485. He held the