The following is from the University of Hull website (slb-ltsu.hull.ac.uk/awe/index.php?title=Albeit_-_howbeit), and might be of use/interest. It discusses "albeit" and also "howbeit."
Albeit is properly a conjunction. It means the same as 'though', or 'although'. It can be used more firmly as a contrast, 'even though' or 'even if'. It is rather archaic, and is rarely found outside academic and legal English.
Howbeit is even more archaic, although still to be found in academic writing - sometimes by the confusion that Fowler is trying to warn us against. It is nowadays only a sentence adverbial, roughly equivalent ot 'nevertheless' or 'however' (although OED records an obsolete usage as a conjunction, with a last quotation dated 1634.)
Fowler's concern is mostly with the implications for punctuation. As howbeit is most commonly used at the start of a sentence although it is not a conjunction (~ 'joining word'), it should normally be preceded by a full stop. As albeit, on the contrary, is a conjunction, it should normally be preceded by a comma.
The etymology of both these words may be worth attention. They contain a use of the subjunctive mood of the verb 'to be': each was originally a three-word phrase, 'al[though] it [may] be' and 'how[ever] it may be'. Each had a past tense, all were it and how were it.
Neither is current in present-day English.