In Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles history “Tune In”, he references a pub called “Ye Cracke” that he says was pronounced as “The Cracke” when Lennon frequented in the 1950s. But nowadays (in North America at least), the Y-as-thorn is mostly mispronounced as a Y-as-vowel, particularly when quoting articles like “ye” in Shakespeare, the King James Bible, or stock phrases like “Ye Olde...”. (This is only true of the definitive article version of "ye", not the pronoun; see u/Vucufigigudes comment below).

I’m not asking when the linguistic/orthographic change took place. I want to know when modern anglophones began misunderstanding the olde usage, and whether this is exclusive to North American speakers. Thank you.