Having grown up in England and never really paying this much attention to the etymology of the English language, I had always assume Ye to be pronounced exactly

Having grown up in England and never really paying this much attention to the etymology of the English language, I had always assume Ye to be pronounced exactly as it looks... Yee. Am I right in interpreting what you're saying is that it's actually pronounced as "the" because the y is really just a print substitute because of the lack of thorn character on the press but would have still been pronounced when read as if it were the thorn character? If that's the case, you have just unlocked a fascination of the English language I never had until this exact moment. Thank you, no more work is getting done today.