Although Louis XVII, b. Mar. 27, 1785, was proclaimed king of France by royalist exiles after the execution (January 1793) of his father, Louis XVI, he remained a prisoner until his death. The second son of Louis and Marie Antoinette, he became heir to the throne on the death (1789) of his elder brother. After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1792, he was first imprisoned with his family. In July 1793 he was removed from his mother and placed for a time in the care of a shoemaker, Antoine Simon. Neglected, he became ill and almost certainly died on June 8, 1795. Rumors that he had escaped enabled a number of people to claim later that they were Louis XVII and that the body identified as Louis's was not in fact his. DNA tests performed in 2000 proved that it was ("Louis XVII, King of France." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2012. Web. 1 Feb. 2012)