married, on 13 April 1762, Lady Frances Maria Beresford, the sixth daughter of Marcus, first earl of Tyrone. There was no issue of the marriage. His widow survived him many years, and died at Clifton on 18 April 1815. By his will he left a considerable amount of property to Trinity College, Dublin, after his wife's death, for the establishment of a professorship of Irish, the maintenance of a prize fund for the best compositions in English, Irish, Greek, and Latin, and for the purchase of Irish books and manuscripts. The validity of the will was contested, and the gift to Trinity College having been declared void, as being contrary to the law of mortmain, John Flood of Flood Hall, a nephew of Chief-justice Flood, was successful in establishing his claim to the property in question.
Flood was a man of ample fortune and many social qualities. Possessing brilliant conversational powers, delighting in field sports and private theatricals, genial and frank in manner, he was popular in all classes of society. In his youth Flood had a fine figure and a handsome countenance; but in later life he was somewhat gaunt in appearance, and was described by Wraxall as ‘a man of the most forbidding physiognomy.’ With the exception, perhaps, of Malone, Flood was the first great orator which Ireland produced. His speeches, though too laboured and sententious, were remarkable for the closeness of their reasoning. As a master of grave sarcasm and fierce invective he had no equal, while his readiness of reply, his extensive knowledge of constitutional questions, and his consummate mastery of parliamentary tactics, made him a most formidable opponent to the government in the Irish House of Commons. Curran declared that ‘Flood was unmeasurably the greatest man of his time in Ireland.’ In Grattan's opinion Flood ‘had faults; but he had great powers, great public effect. He persuaded the old, he inspired the young; the Castle vanished before him. On a small subject he was miserable. Put into his hand a distaff, and like Hercules he made sad work of it; but give him the thunderbolt, and he had the arm of Jupiter’ (Grattan, Miscellaneous Works, 1822, p. 118). Flood was identified with all the great measures of Irish reform in his time; but though he was prepared to give complete religious toleration to the Roman catholics in Ireland, he consistently refused to give them any political power. Though he cannot be charged with corruption in accepting office, Flood committed a grave error in judgment in doing so, which proved fatal to his reputation. Moreover, instead of resigning when he found that he had over-estimated his influence with the government, he clung to office as long as he was able. His long silence during the debates on the many constitutional questions which he had vigorously supported when in opposition is an indelible stain upon his political character. The loss of his popularity had a perceptible influence on his nature, and his career from the time of taking office was that of a soured and disappointed man. A portrait of Flood ‘speaking in the Irish House of Commons’ was exhibited in the Loan Collection of National Portraits of 1867 (Catalogue, No. 796). An engraving from a drawing by Comerford will be found in Barrington's ‘Historic Memoirs’ (1833), ii. opp. 106, and a lithograph of the portrait, in the possession of the university of Dublin, forms the frontispiece to Flood's ‘Memoirs.’
While at Oxford Flood wrote some English verses on the death of Frederick, prince of Wales, which were published in ‘Epicedia Oxoniensia,’ &c. (1751), pp. 127–8. While preparing for his parliamentary career he translated several speeches of Demosthenes, and other portions of the classics; but his manuscripts were all destroyed shortly after his death. The authorship of ‘A Letter to the People of Ireland on the Expediency and Necessity of the Present Associations in Ireland in favour of our own Manufactures, with some Cursory Observations on the effects of a Union,’ Dublin, 1799, 8vo, has been attributed to him. His ‘sepulchral verses’ on Dr. Johnson are to be found in Boswell's ‘Life of Johnson’ (G. B. Hill's edition), iv. 424–5. He was the author of the following works: 1. ‘An Ode on Fame and the First Pythian Ode of Pindar’ (anon.), London, 1775, 4to. 2. ‘Speech of the Right Hon. Henry Flood in the House of Commons of Great Britain, Feb. 15, 1787, on the Commercial Treaty with France,’ Dublin, 1787, 8vo. 3. ‘Speech and Proposition of the Right Hon. Henry Flood in the House of Commons of Great Britain, March 4, 1790, for a Reform in the Representation of Parliament,’ London, 1790, 8vo.
[Warden Flood's Memoirs of Henry Flood (1838); Original Letters, principally from Lord Charlemont … to the Right Hon. Henry Flood (1820); Lecky's Hist. of England, vol. iv. chap. xvi. xvii., vol. vi. chap. xxiv.; Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland (1871), pp. 63–103; Froude's English in Ireland (1881), vols. ii. iii.; Memoirs of the Life and Times of Henry Grattan, vols. i. ii. iii.; Hardy's Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont (1812); Charles Phillips's Curran and his Contemporaries (1857); Wills's Irish Nation (1875), iii. 171–90; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography (1878), pp. 207–
