July 27, 2002	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 16,1423

LONDON: The secret which Queen Elizabeth I carried to her deathbed is finally to be publicly revealed after 400 years.

The beautiful diamond, ruby gold, and mother of pearl ring taken from her body in 1603 and unveiled on Thursday at the National Maritime Museum, will go on public display for the first time next year in an exhibition at the museum.

Throughout her long reign, the ring was an agonizingly 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 an illegitimate child 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 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, north of London, reserved for the use of the UK prime minister of the day, and has never before been out on loan.

Historian David Starkey, who is joint curator of the exhibition, said that Elizabeth’s early experiences dictated the rest of her life.

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.

“This is where Henry was born as well as Elizabeth, where Henry first met Anne of Cleves, and where Anne was arrested — the centre of the Tudor world, Starkey said” —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.