Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season One/@comment-5102537-20130316141226/@comment-5674726-20130323212720

''And given that Uther's knights, the ones we were introduced to, were all noble and far from being bigoted "whoring scums", his system seemed to work quite well. He also had to trust those who he knew or whose parents/relatives he knew. Moreover, royals had a background that was documented in the libraries which was some sort of insurance too. He could have never been sure about strangers who had no written background and no necessary education.''

I wouldn't be surprised if there was more to it than that.

There's a difference between honouring one's supporters and committing to restrict an honour to them and their descendants. The First Code of Camelot would have tied Uther’s hands in the sense that he couldn’t bestow a knighthood on somebody other than a member of one of the noble families if he wanted to. If it was just Uther’s personal policy not to knight anybody other than a member of one of the noble families who had supported him, there would be no need to formalize it by drafting the First Code. It sounds more like a commitment he made to the nobles, which makes sense.

Uther obtained the crown by right of conquest rather than inheritance. He is unlikely to have been able to achieve this without support from those with the resources to help him raise armies, etc. It seems probable that the support of de Bois brothers, the House of Gorlois and other noble families were instrumental in putting Uther on the throne, and if that’s the case, they would hardly have done it out of the goodness of their hearts. They’d have expected something in return, particularly if Uther had a rival for the throne, in which case supporting him would have been a gamble for them.

The First Code of Camelot could have been Uther’s end of the bargain with the families who committed resources to supporting him. They help make him King and, in return, he ensures that they and their families will enjoy a position of privilege and influence in Camelot. Restricting knighthood to the nobles and their descendants means that they don’t need to worry about their power and influence being diluted because Uther can’t round up a couple of dozen plebs and raise them to the nobility.

I think that it was a cop-out that, after all of the fuss over the First Code, it magically stops being a problem when Arthur decides that he wants to knight four commoners.