The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 26 April 1854
(New South Wales)

DEATHS
At his residence, Victoria Terrace, Miller’s Point, on Monday, April 24th, in the 58th year of his age, the Rev. John Couch Grylls, M A., Incumbent of the Church of the Holy Trinity, and Canon of Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, Sydney.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 6 May 1854
(New South Wales)

THE LATE REV. J. C. GRYLLS
(Communicated.)
Amongst those who have, during the present year, been called away by death, there is one to the memory of whose life an especial tribute of respect and regret is due, and had not a pressure of unavoidable business prevented, we would before this have laid before our readers the following brief notice of his career. In a colony like this, which has undergone such rapid changes and sustained such frequent vicissitudes of good and evil, the spirit and bustle of daily life too frequently conceal the quiet, unobtrusive, and useful labours of those whose chief concerns are not of this world; and in a country where all professions of religious faith are alike tolerated and encouraged, it often must happen that acquaintance with the merits of an individual clergyman is confined to the local sphere of his particular ministrations. The death of any minister of God must, therefore, in a land like this, be less of a subject of general recognition, though of not less general regret than in a country where his peculiar church has a different and more extensive influence. Nevertheless, even here, from other circumstances, when one who has ministered in holy things is taken from us, if his conduct has not been opposed to his profession, but if, on the other hand, he has exhibited earnestness and consistency in that conduct, though he may, perchance, have been wanting in some of those striking and brilliant talents which at once command public recognition, there is a certain amount of regret, which it is legitimate and praiseworthy to second. The Rev. J. C. Grylls was a native of Cornwall, and was born about July 1793. He was, consequently, in his 61st year. His early career we have no means of ascertaining; but it appears that he was, for some time, a member of Jesus College, Cambridge, and between 1817 and 1824, a contemporary there of one of the surviving clergy of the Diocese of Sydney. Dr. Law, Bishop of Chester, ordained him a deacon in the Church of England on 11th? December, 1823, on letters dimissory from the Archbishop of York. His first engagement in the ministerial office was that of curate at Marfleet, near Hull, with Bilton annexed. On 29th May, 1825, he was ordained priest by the celebrated Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Pretyman Tomlyne; and he was, afterwards, licensed to the curacy of Upper Gravenhurst, in Bedfordshire. Soon after, he was inducted to the incumbency of Saltash, in Cornwall, where he resided between 12 and 13 years. In that borough he successively held the offices of Alderman, Magistrate, and Mayor—an odd series of preferments, but which he undoubtedly attained not from any motives of secular ambition, but in order to discharge those duties which, in other hands, would have been improperly performed, and to the detriment of the public interests. Such anomalies have occasionally presented themselves in the History of the Church of England; but the necessity for these has, in some measure, been removed by the reforms in Church and State. Still we are not of those who think it right and proper to exclude the ministers of the Gospel from the privilege of attaining to secular offices, and so completely has the outcry against this been ignored by the very authority which sometime ago enacted in England that the clergy should not be admitted to the magisterial office, that within a few months of the time when this enactment was made, it was found necessary, in an important district in the South of England, to all in the services of a clergyman of the Church of England (who is now in this diocese), and who in consequence received a Royal Commission to act in the office of magistrate. The fact, therefore, of Mr. Gryll’s exercising corporate offices must not be misjudged; we regard them merely as proofs of his capacity, and of the esteem in which he was held.
In the year 1838, he abandoned his position at Saltash for the benefit of his family, and on 3rd September of that year, having arrived in Australia, was appointed by the Bishop of Australia first incumbent of St. James’s, Melbourne. In 1840, having obtained a footing in the colony, he returned to England, to bring out his family; and on the occasion of his supposed temporary departure, his parishioners and friends signified the high character he had obtained amongst them, by presenting him with a very handsome testimonial. But before his return, which was unfortunately prolonged by a dangerous and protracted voyage, it had been found necessary to supply his place in Melbourne; and accordingly, on his arrival in Sydney, the present Venerable Archdeacon Cowper, having found it necessary to visit England, the Bishop placed Mr. Grylls in the temporary occupation of St. Philip’s Sydney, whence he was removed on the establishment of the Church of the Holy Trinity in that city to the incumbency thereof. The estimation in which he was held by his Diocesan may be understood by the fact, that on 11th August, 1852, that Right Reverend Prelate collated him to one of the three Canonries in the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, then created by his Lordship; and on 13th of the same months, still further signified his approbation by appointing Mr. Grylls one of his special commissioners for the management of the Diocese during the absence of the Bishop.
It may be also observed, that during his visit in England, the late Archbishop of Canterbury had conferred on Mr. Grylls the degree of Lambeth Master of Arts, thereby expressing his personal respect for one who, by pecuniary difficulties, occasioned by others, had been prevented in completing the studies necessary to obtain a university degree, from which he had unwillingly retired.
Such is the brief account of the outward career of the gentleman whose name heads this statement, but it is not uninstructive. Evidently without any adventitious interest with persons in authority, Mr. Grylls succeeded by the mere force of his own private character in obtaining a respectable position in the Church, and of conciliating in his favour all those amongst whom he lived. He had the further good fortune to have around him an amiable and virtuous family, and of living to see them well settled in life, with a prospect for each of competence in a satisfactory alliance, or honourable profession. He left eight children, seven of whom are daughter, and of whom six are married, and one son who has attained some distinction in the medical profession. Mrs. Grylls, who, unfortunately, at the time of her husband’s death was absent on a visit to some of her family, also survives, and will accompany several of her children and grandchildren to England. Mr. Grylls, as is well known to many of our readers, was not blessed with a strong constitution or much general health. During the last year he has exhibited unequivocal symptoms of decay, till at length, having been gradually sinking under these slow and protracted effects of chronic ailment, he was suddenly carried off by a more violent and rapid attack which he was unable to resist.
Those who knew him best bear testimony to the gentleness and kindness of his nature; and the character of his pulpit discourses and his more private efforts in the service of religion also prove that if he was not fond of public exhibitions of zeal, he was a firm and honest advocate of the principles of the Church to which he belonged. Whatever may be the opinion passed upon the bias of his mind towards his peculiar views of those principles, this at least his opponents, if he had any, might safely declare that he advocated them with fairness and recommended them by charity; and the body of clergy who attended him to his grave are the best guarantees that whether there was or was not any difference in opinion amongst them of these views, of which this is not the place to speak, he died respected and esteemed as an upright, conscientious, and faithful minister. It may be satisfactory to state, in conclusion, that feeling his general health becoming gradually undermined, he had been wishful of repose, but especially that he might in his retirement from more public and active employment devote his remaining years to the conclusion of a most important work in which he had been long engaged, vis, the compilation of “A Service of the Visitation of the Sick.” This probably, is the best testimony which we could offer to the character of his ministry and usefulness of his career. His son-in-law, the Rev. B. L. Watson, being about to sail for England in the Maid of Judah, all the members of Mr. Gryll’s family will soon have left the colony, and thus, both in social and ecclesiastical lite “his place will know him no more.”
The condition of the Church of England by the death of the late Bishop, and by subsequent events, has been fearfully reduced, and it is to be regretted that the provision for the clergy is of so unsatisfactory and disgraceful a nature, that there may be some difficulty in obtaining the services of men of sufficient experience, years, and acquirements to fill up these continued vacancies. All persons of every denomination know that these are necessary characteristics of a successful minister in arduous times, and in a difficult position; and we only echo the universal wish of all sincere Christians, in hoping that Divine Providence may soon clear the way for the progress of His word amongst our brethren of the Church of England.

Contributed by Bob Bolitho