Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Three/@comment-5102537-20131019114834/@comment-5674726-20131027172745

Fimber wrote:

However, I think as a noble/royal he had the right to knight others, just not commoners and he couldn't make them knights of Camelot. Depending on Camelot's laws, of course. Maybe they stated that only the king is allowed to knight men and maybe Uther could have declared their knighthood void. What we know is that only nobles could become knights of Camelot, so maybe the new knights just didn't belong to a particular kingdom at that point of time until Arthur was king.

I think that the show made it quite clear that the King bestowed the knighthoods. Any knighting ceremonies we witnessed, with the exception of the unauthorised Round Table knighting, were performed by the King. It's possible that Arthur may have bestowed knighthoods on Uther's behalf, as the Duke of Cambridge recently did on behalf of the Queen, but he would have been doing so as Uther's proxy and with his approval, not on his own authority, which is a completely different situation.