During Roger II's reign foreign policy remained substantially in the King's hands. For his struggle with the papacy, with the German rulers and with the Campanian rebels was in large measure a personal one, in the sense that Roger had to fight for recognition of his kingly title and of his lordship in southern Italy. Such ministers as George of Antioch and Robert of Selby were executive officers, agents of the royal will rather than directors of the affairs of state. After Roger's death in 1154 the picture becomes more complex. King William I entrusted control of the government to a group of omnicompetent royal ministers, headed by Maio of Bari. Maio's appointment and actions provoked bitter opposition in many sections of the Sicilian community – among his social superiors, the Norman barons, as well as among curial officials both Greek and Latin. Thomas Brown from England found the new atmosphere in government too stifling; he left the service of the Norman Sicilian King to join that of the new Angevin lord of England. Hugo Falcandus too did not like what he saw, pouring eloquent scorn on Maio's parentage – Maio, he says, was the son of a Bari oil merchant (and very probably, for all the insults, a member of the Apulian urban aristocracy); but Falcandus makes it clear that Maio's unpopularity stemmed at least as much from avarice, from lack of achievement and from his domination over the King. There may have been an attempt to enforce payment to the crown of taxes that, in King Roger's time, had been allowed to lapse, under pressure of war or out of royal tact.