More may be added to the earlier biography.
The pattern of Harper’s career leaves no doubt that he was a lawyer, and one reference shows that he was a member of either Middle or Inner Temple. In 1423 ‘Harpour of the Temple’ delivered a Staffordshire inquisition post mortem into Chancery. As a lawyer, he was occasionally active as an arbiter. On 25 May 1440, for example, he was one of a high-ranking group who returned an award in the dispute between Sir Thomas Erdington* and Robert Arderne*.
As part of his efforts to establish his wife’s manor of Rushall as a fitting caput honoris for the leading gentry family he hoped to establish, Harper rebuilt the church or chapel there in the late 1430s, and it is probable that this, rather than, as cited in the earlier biography, the church of Grey Friars in Lichfield, was the place of his burial.