A dean heads the chapter of clergy, known as canons, responsible for the day-to-day life and worship of a cathedral, a role distinct from and, within the cathedral's own governance, largely independent of the diocesan bishop's wider authority over the diocese as a whole; historically this independence produced genuine and sometimes public friction between a cathedral's dean and chapter and its bishop over questions of the cathedral building's use and governance, an arrangement English cathedral statutes have periodically revised to clarify since the Reformation.
Cathedrals founded on the older, pre-Reformation monastic pattern, called old foundation cathedrals in English usage, and those established or re-established at the Reformation on a secular collegiate model, new foundation cathedrals, differ somewhat in the dean and chapter's precise constitutional standing, a distinction still reflected in the governing statutes of specific English cathedrals today even though both types are headed by a dean appointed, in the Church of England, by the Crown on the Prime Minister's recommendation, a pattern of state involvement in senior cathedral appointment that has no equivalent in most other Anglican provinces.