‘Þ’ (‘thorn’) is pronounced ‘th’ and existed in English until the early Middle Ages, until it got confused with the letter ‘y’, leading people to believe that ‘ye’ is an Ye Olde version of ‘the’. It isn’t. It was just that the printing presses used in England were imported from the continent and didn’t have a ‘Þ’, so they used ‘y’ instead.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/do-you-speak-viking
Ye (you) the pronoun was never THE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun)#Confusion_with_definite_article