The beautiful diamond ruby gold and mother of pearl ring, taken from her body in 1603, and unveiled yesterday at the National Maritime Museum, will go on public display for the first time next year in an exhibition at the museum - built on the south London site of Greenwich Palace, where she was born.

Throughout her long reign, the ring was an agonisingly personal reminder of the consequences of one wrong move in politics.

Her diamond initial concealed a secret compartment with a portrait of her mother Anne Boleyn, who lost the king's love and her own head when Elizabeth was just two.

The little girl would later be declared a bastard by her brother Edward, then jailed and threatened with execution by her sister Mary, as each in turn ascended the shaky Tudor throne.

According to legend, the ring was taken from her finger when she died at her palace at Richmond upon Thames, south-west London, in 1603, by Robert Carey. He then rode non-stop, reaching the Scottish border in three days, to bring the news to James VI of Scotland that he was now James I of England.

The ring is now part of the collection at Chequers, the country mansion reserved for the use of the prime minister of the day, and has never before been loaned.

Historian David Starkey, joint curator of the exhibition, said yesterday that Elizabeth's early experiences dictated her life. "The consciousness of vulnerability created her style of royal governance. She is much closer to the model of Tony Blair than that of her father - except she did it much better than Blair."

The exhibition, opening next May, will bring together an unprecedented collection of Elizabethan objects, almost half never displayed before.

These include an opharion, a Tudor musical instrument like a lute, which was made for Elizabeth and is the only one surviving in the world.

The Queen is lending a Holbein drawing of Anne Boleyn, and the Marquis of Salisbury is lending a love letter from Elizabeth's last serious suitor, Francis of Anjou.

A stove tile and a Tudor plaster rose excavated 30 years ago but never displayed are rare relics of the palace of Greenwich itself, destroyed in the 17th century. "It's hard now to imagine just how important Greenwich was," Dr Starkey said.

"This is where Henry was born as well as Elizabeth, where Henry first met Anne of Cleves, and where Anne Boleyn was arrested - the centre of the Tudor world."