Does "beat-ee" mean "one who's asking for beating"?

Context:

Sweetie, formed from the adjective sweet and the diminutive suffix -ie, has been used as a vocative for quite a long time, especially in the United States. It appears as "sweet-ee" in a bit ofcomic verse from 1778 that is also notable for its early use of Yankee to refer to Americans:

O My Yankee, my Yankee,
And O my Yankee, my sweet-ee,
And was its nurse North asham'd
Because such a bantling hath beat-ee?

("North" in the verse is Lord North , the British prime minister during the American Revolution, and bantling is an old word meaning "brat" or "***.")