Archibald Edward Glover

The son of Richard Glover, Glover graduated from Worcester College, Oxford, and was ordained a deacon in the Church of England in 1887 and a priest in 1890. From 1887 to 1895 he had a number of curacies, finally serving under the evangelical clergyman H. W. Webb-Peploe at St. Paul’s, Onslow Square, London.

In1896 he went to China with the China Inland Mission and joined Stanley P. Smith, one of the Cambridge Seven, in Lu’an (present-day Changzhi), Shansi (Shanxi) Province. A year later his wife, Flora, joined him with baby son and daughter, Hedley and Hope. When Smith went on furlough in 1899, Glover was put in charge of the station. Soon after this the Boxer Rebellion spread to Shansi Province, with an outbreak of hostilities in Lu’an. Glover, with his pregnant wife, two children, and fellow missionary Caroline Gates, fled by mule litter, traveling half naked and with little food, and constantly facing insults from the mobs and threats of death from officialdom.

At Hankow (Wuhan), Hupeh (Hubei) Province, the Glovers’ child, Faith Edythe, was born, only to die eleven days later. When they reached Shanghai, Glover’s wife died of peritonitis, and he returned to England. His Thousand Miles of Miracle in China, describing the group’s 67 days of hardship and suffering, became a classic. It went through twenty-two editions, and was translated into German, Swedish, Danish, and Arabic.